LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OF 
CALffORNI* 

SAN  Bfl'EGO 


SHORT  STORIES  OF  THE 
NEW  AMERICA 


SELECTED  AND  EDITED  BY 
MARY  A.  LASELLE 

OF  THE  NEWTON,  MASSACHUSETTS,  HIGH  SCHOOLS 


NEW  YORK 

HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 
1919 


COPYRIGHT,  1919 

BY 
HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 


PREFACE 

THE  purpose  of  this  book  of  short  stories  of  modern 
American  life  is  twofold. 

First,  these  narratives  give  an  interpretation  of 
certain  great  forces  and  movements  in  the  life  of  this 
age.  All  the  authors  represented  are  especially  quali- 
fied to  describe  with  force  and  feeling  some  phase  of 
contemporary  life.  Thinking  people  everywhere  real- 
ize that  it  is  not  enough  to  place  before  young  folks 
the  bare  facts  in  regard  to  community  and  national 
life.  The  heart  must  be  warmed,  the  feelings  must  be 
stirred,  before  the  will  can  be  aroused  to  noble  action 
in  any  great  movement.  The  first  aim  of  this  book, 
then,  is  to  help  to  place  clearly  before  young  people 
the  ideals  of  America  through  the  medium  of  literature 
that  will  grip  the  attention  and  quicken  the  will  to 
action. 

Second,  librarians  have  stated  that  there  are  very 
few  compilations  of  modern  short  stories  of  interest 
and  significance  with  which  to  meet  the  needs  of  young 
people  who  turn  to  the  libraries  for  help  in  reading. 
It  is  hoped  that  this  book  may  supply  the  need  of 
libraries  and  homes  for  a  book  of  live  and  valuable 
short  stories. 

iii 


CONTENTS 

Page 

I.  A  LITTLE  KANSAS  LEAVEN. — Canfield I 

II.  THE  SURVIVORS. — Singmaster 43 

III.  THE  WILDCAT. — Terhune 55 

IV.  THE  CITIZEN. — Dwyer 85 

V.  THE  INDIAN  OF  THE  RESERVATION. — Coolidge 109 

VI.  THE  NIGHT  ATTACK. — Pier 119 

VII.  THE  PATH  OF  GLORY. — Pulver 133 

VIII.  SERGT.  WARREN  COMES  BACK  FROM  FRANCE. — Ames...  171 

IX.  THE  COWARD. — Empty 181 

X.  CHATEAU-THIERRY. — Bartlett 199 


SOMETHING  ABOUT  THE  AUTHORS  AND  THE 
STORIES 

DOROTHY  CANFIFLD  (Dorothea  Frances  Canfield 
Fisher),  the  author  of  Home  Fires  in  France  from  which 
"A  Little  Kansas  Leaven"  was  taken,  is  one  of  the 
most  convincing  and  brilliant  writers  of  the  times. 
She  always  writes  with  a  purpose,  but  as  all  of  her 
work  is  characterized  by  originality,  clearness,  and 
the  vital  quality  of  human  sympathy,  there  is  not  a 
dull  line  in  any  of  her  fiction  or  her  educational 
writings. 

Home  Fires  in  France  is  a  truthful  record  of  Mrs. 
Fisher's  impressions  of  life  in  tragic,  devastated  France 
during  the  Great  War.  During  much  of  this  period 
the  author  was  working  for  the  relief  of  those  made 
blind  by  war.  The  tremendous  appeal  to  America 
made  by  this  book  testifies  to  the  sincerity  and  the 
genius  of  the  author. 

Dorothy  Canfield  was  born  in  Lawrence,  Kansas,  in 
1879.  She  obtained  degrees  from  Ohio  State  Univer- 
sity and  from  Columbia  and  studied  and  traveled 
abroad  extensively,  becoming  an  accomplished  linguist. 
She  is  the  author,  under  the  name  of  Dorothy  Can- 
field,  of  some  of  the  most  brilliant  fiction  of  the  day, 
The  Squirrel-Cage,  The  Bent  Twig,  and  other  novels, 
and  under  her  married  name,  Dorothy  Canfield  Fisher, 

vii 


viii      THE  AUTHORS  AND  THE  STORIES 

of  some  valuable  educational  works,  The  Montessori 
Mother,  Mothers  and  Children,  and  other  books  of  pro- 
gressive ideas  in  education.  Mrs.  Fisher  is  now  in 
France  (1918)  carrying  on  her  work  of  mercy  for  the 
French  soldiers  and  their  families. 


ELSIE  SINGMASTER  (Mrs.  Harold  Lewars)  lives  in 
Gettysburg,  Pennsylvania,  and  has  written  most  en- 
tertaining stories  of  that  historic  region  and  also  of 
the  life  of  the  descendants  of  the  Dutch  settlers  of 
Pennsylvania.  Among  her  many  stories  are  When 
Sarah  Saved  the  Day,  The  Christmas  Angel,  The  Flag 
of  Eliphalet,  and  Stories  of  the  Red  Harvest  and  the  After- 
math. This  author  is  a  frequent  contributor  to  maga- 
zines. In  The  Survivors  we  watch  the  conflict  in  the 
breast  of  stubborn  old  Adam  Foust  and  rejoice  with 
tears  in  our  eyes  when  in  the  time  of  his  friend's  need, 
love  conquers,  and  Adam  and  Henry  march  arm-in- 
arm down  the  village  street.  The  story  is  told  with 
the  realism  and  beauty  that  characterize  all  of  this 
author's  work,  much  of  which  describes  the  everyday 
happenings  of  commonplace  people  with  absolute 
fidelity. 

ALBERT  PAYSON  TERHUNE  (1872-  )  wrote  his  first 
book  in  collaboration  with  his  distinguished  mother, 
"Marion  Harland,"  a  well-known  name  in  American 
homes.  Mr.  Terhune  has  written  both  novels  and 
short  stories  and  is  especially  successful  in  the  latter 
form.  Among  his  best  stories  are  Caritas,  Night  of 


THE  AUTHORS  AND  THE  STORIES        ix 

the  Dub,  Quiet,  and  The  Wildcat.  In  The  Wildcat  we 
watch  with  deepest  interest  the  actions  of  a  Southern 
mountaineer,  who,  torn  from  his  backwoods  home  by 
the  draft,  was  forced  to  adopt  habits  and  manners  and 
to  submit  to  a  discipline  to  which  he  was  utterly  foreign. 
The  mental  gropings  of  this  young  American  and  the 
manner  in  which  he  found  his  soul  and  his  country 
make  a  fascinating  story. 

JAMES  FRANCIS  DWYER  is  an  Australian  by  birth. 
Mr.  Dwyer  has  traveled  extensively  as  a  newspaper 
correspondent  in  Australia,  the  South  Seas,  and  South 
Africa.  He  came  to  America  in  1907.  He  is  the  author 
of  The  White  Waterfall,  The  Bust  of  Lincoln,  The  Spotted 
Panther,  Breath  of  the  Jungle,  and  Land  of  the  Pil- 
grim's Pride. 

In  The  Citizen  we  have  a  beautiful  picture  of  the 
vision  of  freedom  that  came  to  Big  Ivan  in  downtrodden 
Russia,  and  we  see  him  and  the  gentle  Anna  as  they 
follow  the  beckoning  finger  of  hope  across  Europe  and 
the  broad  ocean  until,  in  the  words  of  Ivan,  they  found 
a  home  in  a  land  "where  a  muzhik  is  as  good  as  a  prince 
of  the  blood." 

GRACE  COOLIDGE  is  the  wife  of  an  Arapahoe  Indian 
and  has  spent  many  years  upon  the  Indian  Reserva- 
tions. She  has  told  of  her  observations  during  these 
years  in  a  charming  little  volume  called  Tee-pee  Neigh- 
bors. We  feel  that  the  stories  are  true  and  they  are 
filled  with  the  pathos  of  life  in  the  Reservations. 


x        THE  AUTHORS  AND  THE  STORIES 

ARTHUR  STANWOOD  PIER  is  a  distinguished  writer  of 
stories  for  young  people  and  since  1896  one  of  the 
editors  of  The  Youth's  Companion.  Among  Mr.  Pier's 
books  are  The  Boys  of  St.  Timothy,  The  Jester  of  St. 
Timothy,  Grannis  of  the  Fifth,  Jerry,  The  Plattsburgers, 
The  Pedagogues,  and  The  Women  We  Marry.  In  A 
Night  Attack  we  are  given  a  vivid  picture  of  the  life 
of  the  soldier  in  training  and  of  the  sympathetic  rela- 
tions of  officers  and  men. 

MARY  BRECHT  PULVER  has  in  The  Path  of  Glory 
written  one  of  the  finest  stories  of  the  war.  The  manner 
in  which  a  poor  and  humble  family  of  mountaineers 
secured  distinction  and  very  real  happiness,  though  it 
was  tinged  with  sadness,  makes  a  story  of  gripping 
interest  and  one  that  cannot  fail  to  make  every  reader 
kinder  and  more  humane  in  his  intercourse  with  those 
less  favored  than  himself. 

FISHER  AMES,  Jr.,  is  a  well-known  author  of  stories 
for  boys.  Mr.  Ames  has  been  appointed  the  official 
historian  of  the  Red  Cross  Society  and  has  gone  to 
Europe  (1918)  as  a  commissioned  officer  in  the  United 
States  Army. 

In  Sergt.  Warren  Comes  Back  from  France  the  author 
makes  us  see  very  clearly  the  heroic  figure  of  the  blind 
soldier,  and  we  realize  that  under  the  spell  of  such  a 
personality  the  voters  would  unanimously  decide  to 
spend  their  money  in  France  and  relinquish  the  idea 
of  making  their  town  more  beautiful.  In  the  words 
of  one  of  the  villagers,  "  Sergt.  Warren  can  see  straight 


THE  AUTHORS  AND  THE  STORIES       xi 

even  if  he  is  blind,"  and  the  crowd  will  always  respond 
to  such  leadership. 

ARTHUR  GUY  EMPEY  is  an  American  and  a  soldier 
of  the  Great  War,  who  after  a  life  at  the  Front  in  which 
he  did  all  that  a  brave  man  can  do  for  the  cause  of 
humanity  and  survive,  has  written  of  some  of  his 
adventures  in  Over  the  Top,  one  of  the  best-known 
books  of  the  war.  In  the  chapter  which  we  have  called 
"The  Coward"  he  shows  the  splendid  regeneration 
of  a  despicable  man. 

The  "hero"  in  this  story  is  an  Englishman,  as  Mr. 
Empey  fought  in  the  British  army  before  America 
entered  the  war,  but  the  phase  of  human  nature  por- 
trayed in  "The  Coward"  must  have  been  observable 
in  all  the  belligerent  armies. 

The  cowardice  of  the  few,  however,  was  entirely 
concealed  and  atoned  for  by  the  splendid  bravery  of 
the  many,  and  considerable  numbers  of  men,  who, 
when  drafted,  might  have  been  designated  as  cowards, 
are  leaving  the  army  with  a  record  of  brave  action  in 
times  of  great  danger. 

FREDERICK  ORIN  BARTLETT,  the  author  of  Chateau 
Thierry,  was  born  in  Haverhill,  Massachusetts,  in 
1876  and  was  educated  in  the  public  schools  of  that 
city,  in  a  private  school  abroad,  at  Procter  Academy, 
Andover,  New  Hampshire,  and  at  Harvard.  He  has 
been  connected  with  several  Boston  newspapers  and 
is  a  well-known  writer  of  short  stories. 

In  Chateau  Thierry  he  has  portrayed  very  clearly 


xii       THE  AUTHORS  AND  THE  STORIES 

a  certain  type  of  easy-going,  prosperous  American, — 
the  American  who  was  aroused  to  the  knowledge  of 
higher  ideals  and  to  the  exigencies  of  a  world  at  war 
by  the  shock  and  the  thrill  that  followed  upon  the 
active  participation  of  the  American  forces  in  the  great 
conflict. 


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

Thanks  are  due  to  the  following  authors  and  pub- 
lishers for  permission  to  use  the  selections  contained 
in  this  book: 

Henry  Holt  and  Company  and  Mrs.  Dorothy  Canfield 
(Fisher)  for  "A  Little  Kansas  Leaven"  from  Home  Fires  in 
France.  (Copyright,  1918,  by  Henry  Holt  and  Company.) 

The  Outlook  Company  and  Elsie  Singmaster  Lewars  for 
"The  Survivors."  (Copyright,  1915,  by  The  Outlook  Com- 
pany; copyright,  1916,  by  Elsie  Singmaster  Lewars.) 

Mr.  Albert  Payson  Terhune  for  "The  Wild  Cat."  (Copy- 
right, 1918,  by  The  Curtis  Publishing  Company.) 

P.  F.  Collier  and  Son  and  James  Francis  Dwyer  for  "The 
Citizen."  (Copyright,  1915,  by  P.  F.  Collier  and  Son;  copy- 
right, 1916,  by  James  Francis  Dwyer.) 

The  Four  Seas  Publishing  Company  and  Grace  Coolidge 
for  "The  Indian  of  the  Reservation."  (Copyright,  1917,  by 
The  Four  Seas  Company.) 

The  Youth's  Companion  and  Arthur  Stanwood  Pier  for 
"  A  Night  Attack."  (Copyright,  1918,  by  The  Youth's  Com- 
panion. 

The  Curtis  Publishing  Company  and  Mary  Brecht  Pulver 
for  "The  Path  of  Glory."  (Copyright,  1917,  by  The  Curtis 
Publishing  Company;  copyright,  1918,  by  Mary  Brecht 
Pulver.) 

To  The  Youth's  Companion  and  Fisher  Ames,  Jr.,  for 
"Sergt.  Warren  Comes  Back  from  France."  (Copyright, 
1918,  by  The  Youth's  Companion. 

G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons  and  Arthur  Guy  Empey  for 
xiii 


xiv  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

"The  Coward"  from  Over  the  Top.     (Copyright,   1917,  by 
G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons.) 

Mr.  Frederick  Orin  Bartlett  for  "Chateau  Thierry." 
(Copyright,  1918,  by  The  Curtis  Publishing  Company.) 

Grateful  acknowledgment  is  made  also  to  Miss  Alice 
M.  Jordan  of  the  Boston  Public  Library,  and  Miss 
Gladys  M.  Bigelow  of  the  Newton  Technical  High 
School  Library  for  suggestions  and  help. 


SHORT  STORIES  OF  THE  NEW  AMERICA 


SHORT  STORIES   OF   THE 
NEW  AMERICA 


A  LITTLE  KANSAS  LEAVEN 

BETWEEN  1620  and  1630  Giles  Boardman,  an  honest, 
sober,  well-to-do  English  master-builder  found  himself 
hindered  in  the  exercise  of  his  religion.  He  prayed 
a  great  deal  and  groaned  a  great  deal  more  (which  was 
perhaps  the  Puritan  equivalent  of  swearing),  but  in  the 
end  he  left  his  old  home  and  his  prosperous  business  and 
took  his  wife  and  young  children  the  long,  difficult, 
dangerous  ocean  voyage  to  the  New  World.  There,  to 
the  end  of  his  homesick  days,  he  fought  a  hand-to- 
hand  battle  with  wild  nature  to  wring  a  living  from  the 
soil.  He  died  at  fifty-four,  an  exhausted  old  man,  but 
his  last  words  were,  "Praise  God  that  I  was  allowed 
to  escape  out  of  the  pit  digged  for  me." 

His  family  and  descendants,  condemned  irrevocably 
to  an  obscure  struggle  for  existence,  did  little  more  than 
keep  themselves  alive  for  about  a  hundred  and  thirty 
years,  during  which  time  Giles'  spirit  slept. 

In  1775  one  °f  his  great-great-grandsons,  Elmer 
Boardman  by  name,  learned  that  the  British  soldiers 
were  coming  to  take  by  force  a  stock  of  gunpowder  con- 

3 


4  A  LITTLE  KANSAS  LEAVEN 

cealed  in  a  barn  for  the  use  of  the  barely  beginning 
American  army.  He  went  very  white,  but  he  kissed  his 
wife  and  little  boy  good-bye,  took  down  from  its  pegs 
his  musket,  and  went  out  to  join  his  neighbors  in  re- 
pelling the  well-disciplined  English  forces.  He  lost  a 
leg  that  day  and  clumped  about  on  a  wooden  substitute 
all  his  hard-working  life;  but,  although  he  was  never 
anything  more  than  a  poor  farmer,  he  always  stood  very 
straight  with  a  smile  on  his  plain  face  whenever  the 
new  flag  of  the  new  country  was  carried  past  him  on 
the  Fourth  of  July.  He  died,  and  his  spirit  slept. 

In  1854  one  of  his  grandsons,  Peter  Boardman,  had 
managed  to  pull  himself  up  from  the  family  tradition  of 
hard-working  poverty',  and  was  a  prosperous  grocer  in 
Lawrence,  Massachusetts.  The  struggle  for  the  posses- 
sion of  Kansas  between  the  Slave  States  and  the  North 
announced  itself.  It  became  known  in  Massachusetts 
that  sufficiently  numerous  settlements  of  Northerners 
voting  for  a  Free  State  would  carry  the  day  against 
slavery  in  the  new  Territory.  For  about  a  month  Peter 
Boardman  looked  very  sick  and  yellow,  had  repeated 
violent  attacks  of  indigestion,  and  lost  more  than  fifteen 
pounds.  At  the  end  of  that  time  he  sold  out  his  grocery 
(at  the  usual  loss  when  a  business  is  sold  out)  and  took 
his  family  by  the  slow,  laborious  caravan  route  out  to 
the  little  new,  raw  settlement  on  the  banks  of  the  Kaw, 
which  was  called  Lawrence  for  the  city  in  the  East 
which  so  many  of  its  inhabitants  had  left.  Here  he 
recovered  his  health  rapidly,  and  the  look  of  distress  left 
his  face;  indeed,  he  had  a  singular  expression  of  secret 
happiness.  He  was  caught  by  the  Quantrell  raid  and 


A  LITTLE  KANSAS  LEAVEN  5 

was  one  of  those  hiding  in  the  cornfield  when  Quantrell's 
men  rode  in  and  cut  them  down  like  rabbits.  He  died 
there  of  his  wounds.  And  his  spirit  slept. 

His  granddaughter,  Ellen,  plain,  rather  sallow,  very 
serious,  was  a  sort  of  office  manager  in  the  firm  of 
Walker  and  Pennypacker,  the  big  wholesale  hardware 
merchants  of  Marshallton,  Kansas.  She  had  passed 
through  the  public  schools,  had  graduated  from  the 
High  School,  and  had  planned  to  go  to  the  State  Uni- 
versity; but  the  death  of  the  uncle  who  had  brought 
her  up  after  the  death  of  her  parents  made  that  plan 
impossible.  She  learned  as  quickly  as  possible  the 
trade  which  would  bring  in  the  most  money  immedi- 
ately, became  a  good  stenographer,  though  never  a 
rapid  one,  and  at  eighteen  entered  the  employ  of  the 
hardware  firm. 

She  was  still  there  at  twenty-seven,  on  the  day  in 
August,  1914,  when  she  opened  the  paper  and  saw  that 
Belgium  had  been  invaded  by  the  Germans.  She  read 
with  attention  what  was  printed  about  the  treaty 
obligation  involved,  although  she  found  it  hard  to 
understand.  At  noon  she  stopped  before  the  desk  of 
Mr.  Pennypacker,  the  senior  member  of  the  firm,  for 
whom  she  had  a  great  respect,  and  asked  him  if  she 
had  made  out  correctly  the  import  of  the  editorial. 
"Had  the  Germans  promised  they  wouldn't  ever  go 
into  Belgium  in  war?" 

"Looks  that  way,"  said  Mr.  Pennypacker,  nodding, 
and  searching  for  a  lost  paper.  The  moment  after,  he 
had  forgotten  the  question  and  the  questioner. 

Ellen  had  always  rather  regretted  not  having  been 


6  A  LITTLE  KANSAS  LEAVEN 

able  to  "go  on  with  her  education,"  and  this  gave  her 
certain  little  habits  of  mind  which  differentiated  her 
somewhat  from  the  other  stenographers  and  typewriters 
in  the  office  with  her,  and  from  her  cousin,  with  whom 
she  shared  the  small  bedroom  in  Mrs.  Wilson's  boarding- 
house.  For  instance,  she  looked  up  words  in  the  dic- 
tionary when  she  did  not  understand  them,  and  she 
had  kept  all  her  old  schoolbooks  on  the  shelf  of  the 
boarding-house  bedroom.  Finding  that  she  had  only 
a  dim  recollection  of  where  Belgium  was,  she  took 
down  her  old  geography  and  located  it.  This  was  in 
the  wait  for  lunch,  which  meal  was  always  late  at  Mrs. 
Wilson's.  The  relation  between  the  size  of  the  little 
country  and  the  bulk  of  Germany  made  an  impression 
on  her.  "My!  it  looks  as  though  they  could  just  make 
one  mouthful  of  it,"  she  remarked.  "  It's  awfully  little." 

"Who?"  asked  Maggie.    "What?" 

"Belgium  and  Germany." 

Maggie  was  blank  for  a  moment.  Then  she  remem- 
bered. "Oh,  the  war.  Yes,  I  know.  Mr.  Went- 
worth's  fine  sermon  was  about  it  yesterday.  War  is  the 
wickedest  thing  in  the  world.  Anything  is  better  than 
to  go  killing  each  other.  They  ought  to  settle  it  by 
arbitration.  Mr.  Wentworth  said  so." 

"They  oughtn't  to  have  done  it  if  they'd  promised 
not  to,"  said  Ellen.  The  bell  rang  for  the  belated  lunch 
and  she  went  down  to  the  dining-room  even  more 
serious  than  was  her  habit. 

She  read  the  paper  very  closely  for  the  next  few  days, 
and  one  morning  surprised  Maggie  by  the  loudness  of 
her  exclamation  as  she  glanced  at  the  headlines. 


A  LITTLE  KANSAS  LEAVEN  7 

"What's  the  matter?"  asked  her  cousin.  "Have  they 
found  the  man  who  killed  that  old  woman?"  She  her- 
self was  deeply  interested  in  a  murder  case  in  Chicago. 

Ellen  did  not  hear  her.  "Well,  thank  goodness!" 
she  exclaimed.  "England  is  going  to  help  France  and 
Belgium!" 

Maggie  looked  over  her  shoulder  disapprovingly. 
"Oh,  I  think  it's  awful!  Another  country  going  to  war! 
England  a  Christian  nation,  too!  I  don't  see  how 
Christians  can  go  to  war.  And  I  don't  see  what  call 
the  Belgians  had,  anyhow,  to  fight  Germany.  They 
might  have  known  they  couldn't  stand  up  against  such 
a  big  country.  All  the  Germans  wanted  to  do  was  just 
to  walk  along  the  roads.  They  wouldn't  have  done 
any  harm.  Mr.  Schnitzler  was  explaining  it  to  me 
down  at  the  office. 

"They'd  promised  they  wouldn't,"  repeated  Ellen. 
"And  the  Belgians  had  promised  everybody  that  they 
wouldn't  let  anybody  go  across  their  land  to  pick  on 
France  that  way.  They  kept  their  promise  and  the 
Germans  didn't.  It  makes  me  mad!  I  wish  to  good- 
ness our  country  would  help  them!" 

Maggie  was  horrified.  "Ellen  Boardman,  would  you 
want  Americans  to  commit  murder?  You'd  better  go 
to  church  with  me  next  Sunday  and  hear  Mr.  Went- 
worth  preach  one  of  his  fine  sermons." 

Ellen  did  this,  and  heard  a  sermon  on  passive  resist- 
ance as  the  best  answer  to  violence.  She  was  accus- 
tomed to  accepting  without  question  any  statement  she 
found  in  a  printed  book,  or  what  any  speaker  said  in 
any  lecture.  Also  her  mind,  having  been  uniquely  de- 


8  A  LITTLE  KANSAS  LEAVEN 

voted  for  many  years  to  the  problems  of  office  adminis- 
tration, moved  with  more  readiness  among  letter-files 
and  card^catalogues  of  customers  than  among  the  ab- 
stract ideas  where  now,  rather  to  her  dismay,  she  began 
to  find  her  thoughts  centering.  More  than  a  week 
passed  after  hearing  that  sermon  before  she  said,  one 
night  as  she  was  brushing  her  hair:  "About  the  Bel- 
gians— if  a  robber  wanted  us  to  let  him  go  through 
this  room  so  he  could  get  into  Mrs.  Wilson's  room  and 
take  all  her  money  and  maybe  kill  her,  would  you  feel 
all  right  just  to  snuggle  down  in  bed  and  let  him?  Es- 
pecially if  you  had  told  Mrs.  Wilson  that  she  needn't 
ever  lock  the  door  that  leads  into  our  room,  because 
you'd  see  to  it  that  nobody  came  through  ? " 

"Oh,  but,"  said  Maggie,  "Mr.  Wentworth  says  it  is 
only  the  German  Government  that  wanted  to  invade 
Belgium,  that  the  German  soldiers  just  hated  to  do 
h.  If  you  could  fight  the  German  Kaiser,  it'd  be  all 
right." 

Ellen  jumped  at  this  admission.  "Oh,  Mr.  Went- 
worth does  think  there  are  some  cases  where  it  isn't 
enough  just  to  stand  by,  and  say  you  don't  like  it?" 

Maggie  ignored  this.  "  He  says  the  people  who  really 
get  killed  are  only  the  poor  soldiers  that  aren't  to 
blame." 

Ellen  stood  for  a  moment  by  the  gas,  her  hair  up  in 
curl-papers,  the  light  full  on  her  plain,  serious  face,  sal- 
low above  the  crude  white  of  her  straight,  unoma- 
mented  nightgown.  She  said,  and  to  her  own  surprise 
her  voice  shook  as  she  spoke:  "Well,  suppose  the  real 
robber  stayed  down  in  the  street  and  only  sent  up  here 


A  LITTLE  KANSAS  LEAVEN  9 

to  rob  and  kill  Mrs.  Wilson  some  men  who  just  hated 
to  do  it,  but  were  too  afraid  of  him  not  to.  Would  you 
think  it  was  all  right  for  us  to  open  our  door  and  let 
them  go  through  without  trying  to  stop  them?" 

Maggie  did  not  follow  this  reasoning,  but  she  re- 
ceived a  disagreeable,  rather  daunting  impression  from 
the  eyes  which  looked  at  her  so  hard,  from  the  stem, 
quivering  voice.  She  flounced  back  on  her  pillow,  say- 
ing impatiently:  "I  don't  know  what's  got  into  you, 
Ellen  Boardman.  You  look  actually  qutfr,  these  days  I 
What  do  you  care  so  much  about  the  Belgians  for?  You 
never  heard  of  them  before  all  this  began!  And  every- 
body knows  bow  immoral  French  people  are." 

Ellen  turned  out  the  gas  and  got  into  bed  sflendy. 

Maggie  felt  uncomfortable  and  aggrieved.  The  next 
time  she  saw  Mr.  Wentworth  she  repeated  the  conversa- 
tion to  him.  She  hoped  and  expected  that  the  young 
minister  would  immediately  furnish  her  with  a  crushing 
argument  to  lay  Ellen  low,  but  instead  he  was  silent  for 
a  moment,  and  then  said:  "That's  rather  an  interesting 
illustration,  about  the  burglars  going  through  your 
loom.  Where  does  she  get  such  ideas?" 

Maggie  iliinuiM  il  with  some  heat  any  knowledge  of 
the  source  of  her  cousin's  eccentricities.  "I  don't  knoat 
where!  She  s  a  stenographer  downtown. 

Mr.  Wentworth  looked  thoughtful  and  walked  away, 
evidently  having  forgotten  Maggie. 

In  the  days  which  followed,  the  office-manager  of  the 
wholesale  hardware  house  more  and  more  justified  the 
accusation  of  looking  "queer."  It  came  to  be  so  notice- 
able that  one  day  her  employer,  Mr.  Pennypacker,  asked 


io  A  LITTLE  KANSAS  LEAVEN 

her  if  she  didn't  feel  well.  "You've  been  looking  sort 
of  under  the  weather,"  he  said. 

She  answered,  "I'm  just  sick  because  the  United 
States  won't  do  anything  to  help  Belgium  and 
France." 

Mr.  Pennypacker  had  never  received  a  more  violent 
shock  of  pure  astonishment.  "Great  Scotland!"  he 
ejaculated,  "what's  that  to  you?" 

"Well,  I  live  in  the  United  States,"  she  advanced,  as 
though  it  were  an  argument. 

Mr.  Pennypacker  looked  at  her  hard.  It  was  the 
same  plain,  serious,  rather  sallow  face  he  had  seen  for 
years  bent  over  his  typewriter  and  his  letter-files.  But 
the  eyes  were  different — anxious,  troubled. 

"It  makes  me  sick,"  she  repeated,  "to  see  a  great  big 
nation  picking  on  a  little  one  that  was  only  keeping  its 
promise." 

Her  employer  cast  about  for  a  conceivable  reason  for 
the  aberration.  "Any  of  your  folks  come  here  from 
there?"  he  ventured. 

"Gracious,  no!"  cried  Ellen,  almost  as  much  shocked 
as  Maggie  would  have  been  at  the  idea  that  there  might 
be  "foreigners"  in  her  family.  She  added:  "But  you 
don't  have  to  be  related  to  a  little  boy,  do  you,  to  get 
mad  at  a  man  that's  beating  him  up,  especially  if  the 
boy  hasn't  done  anything  he  oughtn't  to?" 

Mr.  Pennypacker  stared.  "I  don't  know  that  I  ever 
looked  at  it  that  way."  He  added:  "I've  been  so  taken 
up  with  that  lost  shipment  of  nails,  to  tell  the  truth,  that 
I  haven't  read  much  about  the  war.  There's  always 
some  sort  of  a  war  going  on  over  there  in  Europe,  seems 


A  LITTLE  KANSAS  LEAVEN  11 

to  me."  He  stared  for  a  moment  into  space,  and  came 
back  with  a  jerk  to  the  letter  he  was  dictating. 

That  evening,  over  the  supper-table,  he  repeated  to 
his  wife  what  his  stenographer  had  said.  His  wife 
asked,  "That  little  sallow  Miss  Boardman  that  never 
has  a  word  to  say  for  herself?"  and  upon  being  told 
that  it  was  the  same,  said  wonderingly,  "Well,  what 
ever  started  her  up,  I  wonder?"  After  a  time  she  said: 
"Is  Germany  so  much  bigger  than  Belgium  as  all  that? 
Pete,  go  get  your  geography."  She  and  her  husband 
and  their  High  School  son  gazed  at  the  map.  "It  looks 
that  way,"  said  the  father.  "Gee!  They  must  have 
had  their  nerve  with  them!  Gimme  the  paper."  He 
read  with  care  the  war-news  and  the  editorial  which 
he  had  skipped  in  the  morning,  and  as  he  read  he  looked 
very  grave,  and  rather  cross.  When  he  laid  the  paper 
down  he  said,  impatiently:  "Oh,  damn  the  war!  Damn 
Europe,  anyhow!"  His  wife  took  the  paper  out  of  his 
hand  and  read  in  her  turn  the  news  of  the  advance  into 
Northern  France. 

Just  before  they  fell  asleep  his  wife  remarked  out  of 
the  darkness,  "Mr.  Scheidemann,  down  at  the  grocery, 
said  to-day  the  war  was  because  the  other  nations  were 
jealous  of  Germany." 

"Well,  I  don't  know,"  said  Mr.  Pennypacker  heavily, 
"that  I'd  have  any  call  to  take  an  ax  to  a  man  because 
I  thought  he  was  jealous  of  me." 

"That's  so,"  admitted  his  wife. 

During  that  autumn  Ellen  read  the  papers,  and  from 
time  to  time  broke  her  silence  and  unburdened  her  mind 
to  the  people  in  the  boarding-house.  They  considered 


12  A  LITTLE  KANSAS  LEAVEN 

her  unbalanced  on  the  subject.  The  young  reporter  on 
the  Marshallton  Herald  liked  to  lead  her  on  to  "get  her 
going,"  as  he  said — but  the  others  dodged  whenever  the 
war  was  mentioned  and  looked  apprehensively  in  her 
direction. 

The  law  of  association  of  ideas  works,  naturally 
enough,  in  Marshallton,  Kansas,  quite  as  much  at  its 
ease  as  in  any  psychological  laboratory.  In  fact  Mar- 
shallton was  a  psychological  laboratory  with  Ellen 
Boardman,  an  undefined  element  of  transmutation. 
Without  knowing  why,  scarcely  realizing  that  the  little 
drab  figure  had  crossed  his  field  of  vision,  Mr.  Penny- 
packer  found  the  war  recurring  to  his  thoughts  every 
time  he  saw  her.  He  did  not  at  all  enjoy  this,  and  each 
time  that  it  happened  he  thrust  the  disagreeable  subject 
out  of  his  mind  with  impatience.  The  constant  recur- 
rence of  the  necessity  for  this  effort  brought  upon  his 
usually  alert,  good-humored  face  an  occasional  clouded 
expression  like  that  which  darkened  his  stenographer's 
eyes.  When  Ellen  came  into  the  dining-room  of  the 
boarding-house,  even  though  she  did  not  say  a  word, 
every  one  there  was  aware  of  an  unpleasant  interruption 
to  the  habitual,  pleasant  current  of  their  thoughts  di- 
rected upon  their  own  affairs.  In  self-defense  some  of 
the  women  took  to  knitting  polo-caps  for  Belgian  chil- 
dren. With  those  in  their  hands  they  could  listen,  with 
more  reassuring  certainty  that  she  was  "queer,"  to  Miss 
Boardman's  comments  on  what  she  read  in  the  news- 
paper. Every  time  Mr.  Wentworth,  preaching  one  of 
his  excellent,  civic-minded  sermons  on  caring  for  the 
babies  of  the  poor,  or  organizing  a  playground  for  the 


A  LITTLE  KANSAS  LEAVEN  13 

children  of  the  factory  workers,  or  extending  the  work 
of  the  Ladies'  Guild  to  neighborhood  visits,  caught 
sight  of  that  plain,  very  serious  face  looking  up  at  him 
searchingly,  expectantly,  he  wondered  if  he  had  been 
right  in  announcing  that  he  would  not  speak  on  the 
war  because  it  would  certainly  cause  dissension  among 
his  congregation. 

One  day,  in  the  middle  of  winter,  he  found  Miss 
Boardman  waiting  for  him  in  the  church  vestibule  after 
every  one  else  had  gone.  She  said,  with  her  usual  di- 
rectness: "Mr.  Wentworth,  do  you  think  the  French 
ought  to  have  just  let  the  Germans  walk  right  in  and 
take  Paris  ?  Would  you  let  them  walk  right  in  and  take 
Washington?" 

The  minister  was  a  young  man,  with  a  good  deal  of 
natural  heat  in  his  composition,  and  he  found  himself 
answering  this  bald  question  with  a  simplicity  as  bald : 
"No,  I  wouldn't." 

"Well,  if  they  did  right,  why  don't  we  help  them?" 
Ellen's  homely,  monosyllabic  words  had  a  ring  of  de- 
spairing sincerity. 

,  Mr.  Wentworth  dodged  them  hastily.  "We  are  help- 
ing them.  The  charitable  effort  of  the  United  States 
in  the  war  is  something  astounding.  The  statistics  show 
that  we  have  helped.  .  .  ."  He  was  going  on  to  repeat 
some  statistics  of  American  war- relief  just  then  current, 
when  Mr.  Scheidemann,  the  prosperous  German  grocer, 
a  most  influential  member  of  the  First  Congregational 
Church,  came  back  into  the  vestibule  to  look  for  his 
umbrella,  which  he  had  forgotten  after  the  service.  By 
a  reflex  action  beyond  his  control,  the  minister  stopped 


14  A  LITTLE  KANSAS  LEAVEN 

talking  about  the  war.  He  and  Miss  Boardman  had, 
for  just  long  enough  so  that  he  realized  it,  the  appear- 
ance of  people  "caught"  discussing  something  they 
ought  not  to  mention.  The  instant  after,  when  Ellen 
had  turned  away,  he  felt  the  liveliest  astonishment  and 
annoyance  at  having  done  this.  He  feared  that  Miss 
Boardman  might  have  the  preposterous  notion  that  he 
was  afraid  to  talk  about  the  war  before  a  German.  This 
idea  nettled  him  intolerably.  Just  before  he  fell  asleep 
that  night  he  had  a  most  disagreeable  moment,  half 
awake,  half  asleep,  when  he  himself  entertained  the  pre- 
posterous idea  which  he  had  attributed  to  Miss  Board- 
man. It  woke  him  up,  broad  awake,  and  very  much 
vexed.  The  little  wound  he  had  inflicted  on  his  own 
vanity  smarted.  Thereafter  at  any  mention  of  the  war 
he  straightened  his  back  to  a  conscious  stiffness,  and  ' 
raised  his  voice  if  a  German  were  within  hearing.  And 
every  time  he  saw  that  plain,  dull  face  of  the  stenog- 
rapher, he  winced. 

On  the  8th  of  May,  1915,  when  Ellen  went  down  to 
breakfast,  the  boarding-house  dining-room  was  excited. 
Ellen  heard  the  sinking  of  the  Lusitania  read  out  aloud 
by  the  young  reporter.  To  every  one's  surprise,  she 
added  nothing  to  the  exclamations  of  horror  with  which 
the  others  greeted  the  news.  She  looked  very  white 
and  left  the  room  without  touching  her  breakfast.  She 
went  directly  down  to  the  office  and  when  Mr.  Penny- 
packer  came  in  at  nine  o'clock  she  asked  him  for  a 
leave  of  absence,  "maybe  three  months,  maybe  more," 
depending  on  how  long  her  money  held  out.  She  ex- 
plained that  she  had  in  the  savings-bank  five  hundred 


A  LITTLE  KANSAS  LEAVEN  15 

dollars,  the  entire  savings  of  a  lifetime,  which  she  in- 
tended to  use  now. 

It  was  the  first  time  in  eleven  years  that  she  had  ever 
asked  for  more  than  her  regular  yearly  fortnight,  but 
Mr.  Pennypacker  was  not  surprised.  "You've  been 
looking  awfully  run-down  lately.  It'll  do  you  good  to 
get  a  real  rest.  But  it  won't  cost  you  all  that!  Where 
are  you  going?  To  Battle  Creek?" 

"I'm  not  going  to  rest,"  said  Miss  Boardman,  in  a 
queer  voice.  "I'm  going  to  work,  in  France." 

The  first  among  the  clashing  and  violent  ideas  which 
this  announcement  aroused  in  Mr.  Pennypacker's  mind 
was  the  instant  certainty  that  she  could  not  have  seen 
the  morning  paper.  "Great  Scotland — not  much  you're 
not!  This  is  no  time  to  be  taking  ocean  trips.  The  sub- 
marines have  just  got  one  of  the  big  ocean  ships,  hun- 
dreds of  women  and  children  drowned." 

"I  heard  about  that,"  she  said,  looking  at  him  very 
earnestly,  with  a  dumb  emotion  struggling  in  her  eyes. 
"That's  why  I'm  going." 

Something  about  the  look  in  her  eyes  silenced  the 
business  man  for  a  moment.  He  thought  uneasily  that 
she  had  certainly  gone  a  little  dippy  over  the  war.  Then 
he  drew  a  long  breath  and  started  in  confidently  to  dis- 
suade her. 

At  ten  o'clock,  informed  that  if  she  went  she  need  not 
expect  to  come  back,  she  went  out  to  the  savings-bank, 
drew  out  her  five  hundred  dollars,  went  down  to  the 
station  and  bought  a  ticket  to  Washington,  one  of  Mr. 
Pennypacker's  arguments  having  been  the  great  diffi- 
culty of  getting  a  passport. 


16  A  LITTLE  KANSAS  LEAVEN 

Then  she  went  back  to  the  boarding-house  and  began 
to  pack  two-thirds  of  her  things  into  her  trunk,  and  put 
the  other  third  into  her  satchel,  all  she  intended  to  take 
with  her. 

At  noon  Maggie  came  back  from  her  work,  found 
her  thus,  and  burst  into  shocked  and  horrified  tears. 
At  two  o'clock  Maggie  went  to  find  the  young  reporter, 
and,  her  eyes  swollen,  her  face  between  anger  and  alarm, 
she  begged  him  to  come  and  "talk  to  Ellen.  She's  gone 
off  her  head." 

The  reporter  asked  what  form  her  mania  took. 

"She's  going  to  France  to  work  for  the  French  and 
Belgians  as  long  as  her  money  holds  out  ...  all  the 
money  she's  saved  in  all  her  life!" 

The  first  among  the  clashing  ideas  which  this  awak- 
ened in  the  reporter's  mind  was  the  most  heartfelt  and 
gorgeous  amusement.  The  idea  of  that  dumb,  back- 
woods, pie-faced  stenographer  carrying  her  valuable 
services  to  the  war  in  Europe  seemed  to  him  the  richest 
thing  that  had  happened  in  years !  He  burst  into  laugh- 
ter. "Yes,  sure  I'll  come  and  talk  to  her,"  he  agreed. 
He  found  her  lifting  a  tray  into  her  trunk.  "See  here, 
Miss  Boardman,"  he  remarked  reasonably,  "do  you 
know  what  you  need?  You  need  a  sense  of  humor! 
You  take  things  too  much  in  dead  earnest.  The  sense 
of  humor  keeps  you  from  doing  ridiculous  things,  don't 
you  know  it  does?" 

Ellen  faced  him,  seriously  considering  this.  "Do  you 
think  all  ridiculous  things  are  bad  ? "  she  asked  him,  not 
as  an  argument,  but  as  a  genuine  question. 

He  evaded  this  and  went  on.    "Just  look  at  yourself 


A  LITTLE  KANSAS  LEAVEN  17 

now  .  .  .  just  look  at  what  you're  planning  to  do.  Here 
is  the  biggest  war  in  the  history  of  the  world;  all  the 
great  nations  involved;  millions  and  millions  of  dollars 
being  poured  out;  the  United  States  sending  hun- 
dreds and  thousands  of  packages  and  hospital  sup- 
plies by  the  million;  and  nurses  and  doctors  and  Lord 
knows  how  many  trained  people  .  .  .  and,  look! 
who  comes  here? — a  stenographer  from  Walker  and 
Pennypacker's,  in  Marshallton,  Kansas,  setting  out  to 
the  war!" 

Ellen  looked  long  at  this  picture  of  herself,  and 
while  she  considered  it  the  young  man  looked  long  at 
her.  As  he  looked,  he  stopped  laughing.  She  said 
finally,  very  simply,  in  a  declarative  sentence  devoid 
of  any  but  its  obvious  meaning,  "No,  I  can't  see  that 
that  is  so  very  funny." 

At  six  o'clock  that  evening  she  was  boarding  the 
train  for  Washington,  her  cousin  Maggie  weeping  by 
her  side,  Mrs.  Wilson  herself  escorting  her,  very  much 
excited  by  the  momentousness  of  the  event  taking 
place  under  her  roof,  her  satchel  carried  by  none  other 
than  the  young  reporter,  who,  oddly  enough,  was  not 
laughing  at  all.  He  bought  her  a  box  of  chocolates 
and  a  magazine,  and  shook  hands  with  her  vigorously 
as  the  train  started  to  pull  out  of  the  station.  He  heard 
himself  saying,  "Say,  Miss  Boardman,  if  you  see  any- 
thing for  me  to  do  over  there,  you  might  let  me  know," 
and  found  that  he  must  run  to  get  himself  off  the  train 
before  it  carried  him  away  from  Marshallton  altogether. 

A  fortnight  from  that  day  (passports  were  not  so  dif- 
ficult to  get  in  those  distant  days  when  war-relief  work 


18  A  LITTLE  KANSAS  LEAVEN 

was  the  eccentricity  of  only  an  occasional  individual) 
she  was  lying  in  her  second-class  cabin,  as  the  steamer 
rolled  in  the  Atlantic  swells  beyond  Sandy  Hook. 
She  was  horribly  seasick,  but  her  plans  were  all  quite 
clear.  Of  course  she  belonged  to  the  Young  Women's 
Christian  Association  in  Marshallton,  so  she  knew  all 
about  it.  At  Washington  she  had  found  shelter  at  the 
Y.  W.  C.  A.  quarters.  In  New  York  she  had  done  the 
same  thing,  and  when  she  arrived  in  Paris  (if  she  ever 
did)  she  could  of  course  go  there  to  stay.  Her  room- 
mate, a  very  sophisticated,  much-traveled  art  student, 
was  immensely  amused  by  the  artlessness  of  this  plan. 
"I've  got  the  dernier  cri  in  greenhorns  in  my  cabin," 
she  told  her  group  on  deck.  "She's  expecting  to  find 
a  Y.  W.  C.  A.  in  Paris!" 

But  the  wisdom  of  the  simple  was  justified  once 
more.  There  was  a  Y.  W.  C.  A.  in  Paris,  run  by  an 
energetic,  well-informed  American  spinster.  Ellen 
crawled  into  the  rather  hard  bed  in  the  very  small 
room  (the  cheapest  offered  her)  and  slept  twelve  hours 
at  a  stretch,  utterly  worn  out  with  the  devastating 
excitement  of  her  first  travels  in  a  foreign  land.  Then 
she  rose  up,  comparatively  refreshed,  and  with  her 
foolish,  ignorant  simplicity  inquired  where  in  Paris 
her  services  could  be  of  use.  The  energetic  woman 
managing  the  Y.  W.  C.  A.  looked  at  her  very  dubiously. 

"Well,  there  might  be  something  for  you  over  on 
the  rue  Pharaon,  number  27.  I  hear  there's  a  bunch 
of  society  dames  trying  to  get  up  a  vestiaire  for  refugees, 
there." 

As  Ellen  noted  down  the  address  she  said  warningly, 


A  LITTLE  KANSAS  LEAVEN  19 

her  eyes  running  over  Ellen's  worn  blue  serge  suit: 
"They  don't  pay  anything.  It's  work  for  volunteers, 
you  know." 

Ellen  was  astonished  that  any  one  should  think  of 
getting  pay  for  work  done  in  France.  "Oh,  gracious, 
no!"  she  said,  turning  away. 

The  directress  of  the  Y.  W.  C.  A.  murmured  to  her- 
self: "Well,  you  certainly  never  can  tell  by  looks!" 

At  the  rue  Pharaon,  number  27,  Ellen  was  motioned 
across  a  stony  gray  courtyard  littered  with  wooden 
packing-cases,  into  an  immense,  draughty  dark  room, 
that  looked  as  though  it  might  have  been  originally 
the  coach  and  harness-room  of  a  big  stable.  This  also 
was  strewed  and  heaped  with  packing-cases  in  in- 
describable confusion,  some  opened  and  disgorging 
innumerable  garments  of  all  colors  and  materials,  others 
still  tightly  nailed  up.  A  couple  of  elderly  workmen 
in  blouses  were  opening  one  of  these.  Before  others 
knelt  or  stood  distracted-looking,  elegantly  dressed 
women,  their  arms  full  of  parti-colored  bundles,  their 
eyes  full  of  confusion.  In  one  corner,  on  a  bench, 
sat  a  row  of  wretchedly  poor  women  and  white-faced, 
silent  children,  the  latter  shod  more  miserably  than 
the  poorest  negro  child  in  Marshallton.  Against  a 
packing-case  near  the  entrance  leaned  a  beautifully 
dressed,  handsome,  middle-aged  woman,  a  hammer 
in  one  hand.  Before  her  at  ease  stood  a  pretty  girl, 
the  fineness  of  whose  tightly  drawn  silk  stockings, 
the  perfection  of  whose  gleaming  coiffure,  the  exquisite 
hang  and  fit  of  whose  silken  dress  filled  Ellen  Boardman 
with  awe.  In  an  instant  her  own  stout  cotton  hose 


20  A  LITTLE  KANSAS  LEAVEN 

hung  wrinkled  about  her  ankles,  she  felt  on  her  neck 
every  stringy  wisp  of  her  badly  dressed  hair,  the  dip 
of  her  skirt  at  the  back  was  a  physical  discomfort. 
The  older  woman  was  speaking.  Ellen  could  not  help 
overhearing.  She  said  forcibly:  "No,  Miss  Parton, 
you  will  not  come  in  contact  with  a  single  heroic  poilu 
here.  We  have  nothing  to  offer  you  but  hard,  unin- 
teresting work  for  the  benefit  of  ungrateful,  uninter- 
esting refugee  women,  many  of  whom  will  try  to  cheat 
and  get  double  their  share.  You  will  not  lay  your 
hand  on  a  single  fevered  masculine  brow.  .  .  ."  She 
broke  off,  made  an  effort  for  self-control  and  went  on 
with  a  resolutely  reasonable  air:  "You'jd  better  go 
out  to  the  hospital  at  Neuilly.  You  can  wear  a  uniform 
there  from  the  first  day,  and  be  in  contact  with  the  men. 
I  wouldn't  have  bothered  you  to  come  here,  except 
that  you  wrote  from  Detroit  that  you  would  be  willing 
to  do  anything,  scrub  floors  or  wash  dishes." 

The  other  received  all  this  with  the  indestructible 
good  humor  of  a  girl  who  knows  herself  very  pretty  and 
as  well  dressed  as  any  one  in  the  world.  "I  know  I 
did,  Mrs.  Putnam,"  she  said,  amused  at  her  own  ab- 
surdity. "But  now  I'm  here  I'd  be  too  disappointed 
to  go  back  if  I  hadn't  been  working  for  the  soldiers. 
All  the  girls  expect  me  to  have  stories  about  the  work, 
you  know.  And  I  can't  stay  very  long,  only  four 
months,  because  my  coming-out  party  is  in  October. 
I  guess  I  will  go  to  Neuilly.  They  take  you  for  three 
months  there,  you  know."  She  smiled  pleasantly, 
turned  with  athletic  grace  and  picked  her  way  among 
the  packing-cases  back  to  the  door. 


A  LITTLE  KANSAS  LEAVEN  21 

Ellen  advanced  in  her  turn. 

"Well?"  said  the  middle-aged  woman,  rather  grimly. 
Her  intelligent  eyes  took  in  relentlessly  every  detail  of 
Ellen's  costume  and  Ellen  felt  them  at  their  work. 

"I  came  to  see  if  I  couldn't  help,"  said  Ellen. 

"Don't  you  want  direct  contact  with  the  wounded 
soldiers?"  asked  the  older  woman  ironically. 

"No,"  said  Ellen  with  her  habitual  simplicity.  "I 
wouldn't  know  how  to  do  anything  for  them.  I'm  not  a 
nurse." 

"You  don't  suppose  that's  any  obstacle!"  ejaculated 
the  other  woman. 

"  But  I  never  had  anything  to  do  with  sick  people," 
said  Ellen.  "I'm  the  office-manager  of  a  big  hardware 
firm  in  Kansas." 

Mrs.  Putnam  gasped  like  a  drowning  person  coming 
to  the  surface.  "You  are!"  she  cried.  "You  don't 
happen  to  know  shorthand,  do  you?" 

"Gracious!  of  course  I  know  shorthand!"  said 
Ellen,  her  astonishment  proving  her  competence. 

Mrs.  Putnam  laid  down  her  hammer  and  drew  an- 
other long  breath.  "How  much  time  can  you  give  us?" 
she  asked.  "Two  afternoons  a  week?  Three?" 

"Oh,  my!"  said  Ellen,  "I  can  give  you  all  my  time, 
from  eight  in  the  morning  till  six  at  night.  That's 
what  I  came  for." 

Mrs.  Putnam  looked  at  her  a  moment  as  though  to 
assure  herself  that  she  was  not  dreaming,  and  then, 
seizing  her  by  the  arm,  she  propelled  her  rapidly  towards 
the  back  of  the  room,  and  through  a  small  door  into 
a  dingy  little  room  with  two  desks  in  it.  Among  the 


22  A  LITTLE  KANSAS  LEAVEN 

heaped-up  papers  on  one  of  these  a  blond  young  woman 
with  inky  fingers  sought  wildly  something  which  she 
did  not  find.  She  said  without  looking  up:  "Oh,  Aunt 
Maria,  I've  just  discovered  that  that  shipment  of 
clothes  from  Louisville  got  acknowledged  to  the  people 
in  Seattle!  And  I  can't  find  that  letter  from  the  woman 
in  Indianapolis  who  offered  to  send  children's  shirts 
from  her  husband's  factory.  You  said  you  laid  it 
on  your  desk,  last  night,  but  I  cannot  find  it.  And 
do  you  remember  what  you  wrote  Mrs.  Worthington? 
Did  you  say  anything  about  the  shoes?" 

Ellen  heard  this  but  dimly,  her  gaze  fixed  on  the 
confusion  of  the  desks  which  made  her  physically 
dizzy  to  contemplate.  Never  had  she  dreamed  that 
papers,  sacred  records  of  fact,  could  be  so  maltreated. 
In  a  reflex  response  to  the  last  question  of  the  lovely, 
distressed  young  lady  she  said:  "Why  don't  you 
look  at  the  carbon  copy  of  the  letter  to  Mrs. 
Worthington?" 

"Copy!"  cried  the  young  lady,  aghast.  "Why,  we 
don't  begin  to  have  time  to  write  the  letters  once,  let 
alone  copy  them!" 

Ellen  gazed  horrified  into  an  abyss  of  ignorance 
which  went  beyond  her  utmost  imaginings.  She  said 
feebly,  "If  you  kept  your  letters  in  a  letter-file,  you 
wouldn't  ever  lose  them." 

"There,"  said  Mrs.  Putnam,  in  the  tone  of  one 
unexpectedly  upheld  in  a  rather  bizarre  opinion,  "I've 
been  saying  all  the  time  we  ought  to  have  a  letter-file. 
But  do  you  suppose  you  could  buy  one  in  Paris?" 
She  spoke  dubiously  from  the  point  of  view  of  one  who 


A  LITTLE  KANSAS  LEAVEN  23 

had  bought  nothing  but  gloves  and  laces  and  old  prints 
in  Paris. 

Ellen  answered  with  the  certainty  of  one  who  had 
found  the  Y.  W.  C.  A.  in  Paris:  "I'm  sure  you  can. 
Why,  they  could  not  do  business  a  minute  without 
letter-files." 

Mrs.  Putnam  sank  into  a  chair  with  a  sigh  of  be- 
wilderment and  fatigue,  and  showed  herself  to  be  as 
truly  a  superior  person  as  she  looked  by  making  the 
following  speech  to  the  newcomer:  "The  truth  is, 
Miss  .  .  ." 

"Boardman,"  supplied  Ellen. 

"Miss  Boardman,  the  fact  is  that  we  are  trying  to  do 
something  which  is  beyond  us,  something  we  ought 
never  to  have  undertaken.  But  we  didn't  know  we 
were  undertaking  it,  you  see.  And  now  that  it  is 
begun,  it  must  not  fail.  All  the  wonderful  American 
good-will  which  has  materialized  in  that  room  full  of 
packing-cases  must  not  be  wasted,  must  get  to  the 
people  who  need  it  so  direly.  It  began  this  way.  We 
had  no  notion  that  we  would  have  so  great  an  affair 
to  direct.  My  niece  and  I  were  living  here  when  the 
war  broke  out.  Of  course  we  gave  all  our  own  clothes 
we  could  spare  and  all  the  money  we  could  for  the 
refugees.  Then  we  wrote  home  to  our  American  friends. 
One  of  my  letters  was  published  by  chance  in  a  New 
York  paper  and  copied  in  a  number  of  others.  Every- 
body who  happened  to  know  my  name" — (Ellen 
heard  afterwards  that  she  was  of  the  holy  of  holies 
of  New  England  families) — "began  sending  me  money 
and  boxes  of  clothing.  It  all  arrived  so  suddenly,  so 


24  A  LITTLE  KANSAS  LEAVEN 

unexpectedly.  We  had  to  rent  this  place  to  put  the 
things  in.  The  refugees  came  in  swarms.  We  found 
ourselves  overwhelmed.  It  is  impossible  to  find  an 
English-speaking  stenographer  who  is  not  already 
more  than  overworked.  The  only  help  we  get  is  from 
volunteers,  a  good  many  of  them  American  society 
girls  like  that  one  you  .  .  ."  she  paused  to  invent  a 
sufficiently  savage  characterization  and  hesitated  to 
pronounce  it.  "Well,  most  of  them  are  not  quite  so 
absurd  as  that.  But  none  of  them  know  any  more 
than  we  do  about  keeping  accounts,  letters  .  .  ." 

Ellen  broke  in:  "How  do  you  keep  your  accounts, 
anyhow?  Bound  ledger,  or  the  loose-leaf  system?" 

They  stared.  "I  have  been  careful  to  set  down 
everything  I  could  remember  in  a  little  note-book," 
said  Mrs.  Putnam. 

Ellen  looked  about  for  a  chair  and  sat  down  on  it 
hastily.  When  she  could  speak  again,  after  a  moment 
of  silent  collecting  of  her  forces  she  said:  "Well,  I 
guess  the  first  thing  to  do  is  to  get  a  letter-file.  I  don't 
know  any  French,  so  I  probably  couldn't  get  it.  If 
one  of  you  could  go  .  .  ." 

The  pretty  young  lady  sprang  for  her  hat.  "I'll 
go!  I'll  go,  Auntie." 

"And,"  continued  Ellen,  "you  can't  do  anything  till 
you  keep  copies  of  your  letters  and  you  can't  make 
copies  unless  you  have  a  typewriter.  Don't  you  sup- 
pose you  could  rent  one?" 

"I'll  rent  one  before  I  come  back,"  said  Eleanor,  who 
evidently  lacked  neither  energy  nor  good-will.  She 
said  to  Mrs.  Putnam:  "I'm  going,  instead  of  you,  so 


A  LITTLE  KANSAS  LEAVEN  25 

that  you  can  superintend  opening  those  boxes.    They 
are  making  a  most  horrible  mess  of  it,  I  know." 

"Before  a  single  one  is  opened,  you  ought  to  take 
down  the  name  and  address  of  the  sender,  and  then 
note  the  contents,"  said  Ellen,  speaking  with  authority. 
"A  card-catalogue  would  be  a  good  system  for  keeping 
that  record,  I  should  think,  with  dates  of  the  arrival  of 
the  cases.  And  why  couldn't  you  keep  track  of  your 
refugees  that  way,  too?  A  card  for  each  family,  with 
a  record  on  it  of  the  number  in  the  family  and  of  every- 
thing given.  You  could  refer  to  it  in  a  moment,  and 
carry  it  out  to  the  room  where  the  refugees  are  re- 
ceived." 

They  gazed  at  her  plain,  sallow  countenance  in  rapt 
admiration-. 

"Eleanor,"  said  Mrs.  Putnam,  "bring  back  cards  for 
a  card-catalogue,  hundreds  of  cards,  thousands  of 
cards."  She  addressed  Ellen  with  a  respect  which  did 
honor  to  her  native  intelligence.  "Miss  Boardman, 
wouldn't  you  better  take  off  your  hat?  Couldn't  you 
work  more  at  your  ease?  You  could  hang  your  things 
here."  With  one  sweep  of  her  white,  well-cared-for 
hand  she  snatched  her  own  Parisian  habiliments  from 
the  hanger  and  hook,  and  installed  there  the  Marshall- 
ton  wraps  of  Ellen  Boardman.  She  set  her  down  in 
front  of  the  desk;  she  put  in  her  hands  the  ridiculous 
little  Russia  leather-covered  note-book  of  the  "ac- 
counts"; she  opened  drawer  after  drawer  crammed  with 
letters;  and  with  a  happy  sigh  she  went  out  to  the  room 
of  the  packing-cases,  closing  the  door  gently  behind 
her,  that  she  might  not  disturb  the  high-priestess  of 


26  A  LITTLE  KANSAS  LEAVEN 

business-management  who  already  bent  over  those 
abominably  misused  records,  her  eyes  gleaming  with 
the  sacred  fire  of  system. 

There  is  practically  nothing  more  to  record  about  the 
four  months  spent  by  Ellen  Boardman  as  far  as  her 
work  at  the  vestiaire  was  concerned.  Every  day  she 
arrived  at  number  27  rue  Pharaon  at  eight  o'clock  and 
put  in  a  good  hour  of  quiet  work  before  any  of  the 
more  or  less  irregular  volunteer  ladies  appeared.  She 
worked  there  till  noon,  returned  to  the  Y.  W.  C.  A., 
lunched,  was  in  the  office  again  by  one  o'clock,  had 
another  hour  of  forceful  concentration  before  any 
of  the  cosmopolitan  great  ladies  finished  their  lengthy 
dejeuners,  and  she  stayed  there  until  six  in  the  evening, 
when  every  one  else  had  gone.  She  realized  that  her 
effort  must  be  not  only  to  create  a  rational  system  of 
records  and  accounts  and  correspondence  which  she  her- 
self could  manage,  but  a  fool-proof  one  which  could  be 
left  in  the  hands  of  the  elegant  ladies  who  would  remain 
in  Paris  after  she  had  returned  to  Kansas. 

And  yet,  not  so  fool-proof  as  she  had  thought  at  first. 
She  was  agreeably  surprised  to  find  both  Mrs.  Putnam 
and  her  pretty  niece  perfectly  capable  of  understanding 
a  system  once  it  was  invented,  set  in  working  order,  and 
explained  to  them.  She  came  to  understand  that  what, 
on  her  first  encounter  with  them,  she  had  naturally 
enough  taken  for  congenital  imbecility,  was  merely  the 
result  of  an  ignorance  and  an  inexperience  which  re- 
mained to  the  end  astounding  to  her.  Their  good-will 
was  as  great  as  their  native  capacity.  Eleanor  set  her- 
self resolutely,  if  very  awkwardly,  to  learn  the  use  of 


A  LITTLE  KANSAS  LEAVEN  27 

the  typewriter.  Mrs.  Putnam  even  developed  the  great- 
est interest  in  the  ingenious  methods  of  corraling  and 
marshaling  information  and  facts  which  were  second 
nature  to  the  business-woman.  "I  never  saw  anything 
more  fascinating!"  she  cried  the  day  when  Ellen  ex- 
plained to  her  the  workings  of  a  system  for  cross-index- 
ing the  card-catalogues  of  refugees  already  aided. 
"How  do  you  think  of  such  things?" 

Ellen  did  not  explain  that  she  generally  thought  of 
them  in  the  two  or  three  extra  hours  of  work  she  put  in 
every  day,  while  Mrs.  Putnam  ate  elaborate  food. 

It  soon  became  apparent  that  there  had  been  much 
" repeating"  among  the  refugees.  The  number  possible 
to  clothe  grew  rapidly,  far  beyond  what  the  "office 
force"  could  manage  to  investigate.  Ellen  set  her  face 
against  miscellaneous  giving  without  knowledge  of  con- 
ditions. She  devised  a  system  of  visiting  inspectors 
which  kept  track  of  all  the  families  in  their  rapidly  grow- 
ing list.  She  even  made  out  a  sort  of  time-card  for  the 
visiting  ladies  which  enabled  the  office  to  keep  some 
track  of  what  they  did,  and  yet  did  not  ruffle  their 
leisure-class  dignity  .  .  .  and  this  was  really  an 
achievement.  She  suggested,  made  out,  and  had  printed 
an  orderly  report  of  what  they  had  done,  what  money 
had  come  in,  how  it  had  been  spent,  what  clothes  had 
been  given  and  how  distributed,  the  number  of  people 
aided,  the  most  pressing  needs.  This  she  had  put  in 
every  letter  sent  to  America.  The  result  was  enough 
to  justify  Mrs.  Putnam's  nai've  astonishment  and  ad- 
miration of  her  brilliant  idea.  Packing-cases  and  checks 
flowed  in  by  every  American  steamer. 


28  A  LITTLE  KANSAS  LEAVEN 

Ellen's  various  accounting  systems  and  card-cata- 
logues responded  with  elastic  ease  to  the  increased  vol- 
ume of  facts,  as  she  of  course  expected  them  to;  but 
Mrs.  Putnam  could  never  be  done  marveling  at  the  cool 
certainty  with  which  all  this  immense  increase  was 
handled.  She  had  a  shudder  as  she  thought  of  what 
would  have  happened  if  Miss  Boardman  had  not 
dropped  down  from  heaven  upon  them.  Dining  out, 
of  an  evening,  she  spent  much  time  expatiating  on  the 
astonishing  virtues  of  one  of  her  volunteers. 

Ellen  conceived  a  considerable  regard  for  Mrs.  Put- 
nam, but  she  did  not  talk  of  her  in  dining  out,  because 
she  never  dined  anywhere.  She  left  the  "office"  at  six 
o'clock  and  proceeded  to  a  nearby  bakery  where  she 
bought  four  sizable  rolls.  An  apple  cart  supplied  a 
couple  of  apples,  and  even  her  ignorance  of  French  was 
not  too  great  an  obstacle  to  the  purchase  of  some  cakes 
of  sweet  chocolate.  With  these  decently  hidden  in  a 
small  black  hand-bag,  she  proceeded  to  the  waiting- 
room  of  the  Gare  de  1'Est  where,  like  any  traveler  wait- 
ing for  his  train  she  ate  her  frugal  meal;  ate  as  much  of 
it,  that  is,  as  a  painful  tightness  in  her  throat  would 
let  her.  For  the  Gare  de  1'Est  was  where  the  majority 
of  French  soldiers  took  their  trains  to  go  back  to  the 
front  after  their  occasional  week's  furlough  with  their 
families. 

No  words  of  mine  can  convey  any  impression  of  what 
she  saw  there.  No  one  who  has  not  seen  the  Gare  de 
1'Est  night  after  night  can  ever  imagine  the  sum  of 
stifled  human  sorrow  which  filled  it  thickly,  like  a 
dreadful  incense  of  pain  going  up  before  some  cruel 


A  LITTLE  KANSAS  LEAVEN  29 

god.  It  was  there  that  the  mothers,  the  wives,  the 
sweethearts,  the  sisters,  the  children  brought  their 
priceless  all  and  once  more  laid  it  on  the  altar.  It  was 
there  that  those  horrible  silent  farewells  were  said,  the 
more  unendurable  because  they  were  repeated  and  re- 
peated till  human  nature  reeled  under  the  burden  laid 
on  it  by  the  will.  The  great  court  outside,  the  noisy 
echoing  waiting-room,  the  inner  platform  which  was  the 
uttermost  limit  for  those  accompanying  the  soldiers  re- 
turning to  hell, — they  were  not  only  always  filled  with 
living  hearts  broken  on  the  wheel,  but  they  were 
thronged  with  ghosts,  ghosts  of  those  whose  farewell 
kiss  had  really  been  the  last,  with  ghosts  of  those  who 
had  watched  the  dear  face  out  of  sight  and  who  were 
never  to  see  it  again.  Those  last  straining,  wordless  em- 
braces, those  last,  hot,  silent  kisses,  the  last  touch  of  the 
little  child's  hand  on  the  father's  cheek  which  it  was 
never  to  touch  again  .  .  .  the  nightmare  place  reeked 
of  them ! 

The  stenographer  from  Kansas  had  found  it  as  sim- 
ply as  she  had  done  everything  else.  "Which  station 
do  the  families  go  to,  to  say  good-bye  to  their  soldiers?" 
she  had  asked,  explaining  apologetically  that  she 
thought  maybe  if  she  went  there  too  she  could  help 
sometimes;  there  might  be  a  heavy  baby  to  carry,  or 
somebody  who  had  lost  his  ticket,  or  somebody  who 
hadn't  any  lunch  for  the  train. 

After  the  first  evening  spent  there,  she  had  shivered 
and  wept  all  night  in  her  bed;  but  she  had  gone  back  the 
next  evening,  with  the  money  she  saved  by  eating  bread 
and  apples  for  her  dinner;  for  of  course  the  sweet 


30  A  LITTLE  KANSAS  LEAVEN 

chocolate  was  for  the  soldiers.  She  sat  there,  armed 
with  nothing  but  her  immense  ignorance,  her  immense 
sympathy.  On  that  second  evening  she  summoned 
enough  courage  to  give  some  chocolate  to  an  elderly 
shabby  soldier,  taking  the  train  sadly,  quite  alone;  and 
again  to  a  white-faced  young  lad  accompanied  by  his 
bent,  poorly  dressed  grandmother.  What  happened  in 
both  those  cases  sent  her  back  to  the  Y.  W.  C.  A.  to 
make  up  laboriously  from  her  little  pocket  French  dic- 
tionary and  to  learn  by  heart  this  sentence:  "I  am  sorry 
that  I  cannot  understand  French.  I  am  an  American." 
Thereafter  the  surprised  and  extremely  articulate  Gallic 
gratitude  which  greeted  her  timid  overtures,  did  not 
leave  her  so  helplessly  swamped  in  confusion.  She 
stammered  out  her  little  phrase  with  a  shy,  embar- 
rassed smile  and  withdrew  as  soon  as  possible  from  the 
hearty  handshake  which  was  nearly  always  the  sub- 
stitute offered  for  the  unintelligible  thanks.  How  many 
such  handshakes  she  had!  Sometimes  as  she  watched 
her  right  hand,  tapping  on  the  typewriter,  she  thought: 
"Those  hands  which  it  has  touched,  they  may  be  dead 
now.  They  were  heroes'  hands."  She  looked  at  her 
own  with  awe,  because  it  had  touched  them. 

Once  her  little  phrase  brought  out  an  unexpected  re- 
sponse from  a  rough-looking  man  who  sat  beside  her 
on  the  bench  waiting  for  his  train,  his  eyes  fixed  gloomily 
on  his  great  soldier's  shoes.  She  offered  him,  shame- 
facedly, a  little  sewing-kit  which  she  herself  had  manu- 
factured, a  pad  of  writing-paper  and  some  envelopes. 
He  started,  came  out  of  his  bitter  brooding,  looked  at 
her  astonished,  and,  as  they  all  did  without  exception, 


A  LITTLE  KANSAS  LEAVEN  31 

read  in  her  plain,  earnest  face  what  she  was.  He 
touched  his  battered  trench  helmet  in  a  sketched  salute 
and  thanked  her.  She  answered  as  usual  that  she  was 
sorry  she  could  not  understand  French,  being  an  Ameri- 
can. To  her  amazement  he  answered  in  fluent  English, 
with  an  unmistakable  New  York  twang:  "Oh,  you  are, 
are  you  ?  Well,  so'm  I.  Brought  up  there  from  the  time 
I  was  a  kid.  But  all  my  folks  are  French  and  my  wife's 
French  and  I  couldn't  give  the  old  country  the  go-by 
when  trouble  came." 

In  the  conversation  which  followed  Ellen  learned  that 
his  wife  was  expecting  their  first  child  in  a  few  weeks 
.  .  .  "that's  why  she  didn't  come  to  see  me  off.  She 
said  it  would  just  about  kill  her  to  watch  me  getting  on 
the  train.  .  .  .  Maybe  you  think  it's  easy  to  leave 
her  all  alone  .  .  .  the  poor  kid!"  The  tears  rose 
frankly  to  his  eyes.  He  blew  his  nose. 

"Maybe  I  could  do  something  for  her,"  suggested 
Ellen,  her  heart  beating  fast  at  the  idea. 

"Gee!  Yes!  If  you'd  go  to  see  her!  She  talks  a 
little  English!"  he  cried.  He  gave  her  the  name  and  ad- 
dress, and  when  that  poilu  went  back  to  the  front  it  was 
Ellen  Boardman  from  Marshallton,  Kansas,  who  walked 
with  him  to  the  gate,  who  shook  hands  with  him,  who 
waved  him  a  last  salute  as  he  boarded  his  train. 

The  next  night  she  did  not  go  to  the  station.  She 
went  to  see  the  wife.  The  night  after  that  she  was  sew- 
ing on  a  baby's  wrapper  as  she  sat  in  the  Gare  de  1'Est, 
turning  her  eyes  away  in  shame  from  the  intolerable 
sorrow  of  those  with  families,  watching  for  those  occa- 
sional solitary  or  very  poor  ones  whom  alone  she  ven- 


32  A  LITTLE  KANSAS  LEAVEN 

tured  to  approach  with  her  timidly  proffered  tokens  of 
sympathy. 

At  the  Y.  W.  C.  A.  opinions  varied  about  her.  She  was 
patently  to  every  eye  respectable  to  her  last  drop  of  pale 
blood.  And  yet  was  it  quite  respectable  to  go  offering 
chocolate  and  writing-paper  to  soldiers  you'd  never  seen 
before?  Everybody  knew  what  soldiers  were!  Some 
one  finally  decided  smartly  that  her  hat  was  a  sufficient 
protection.  It  is  true  that  her  hat  was  not  becoming, 
but  I  do  not  think  it  was  what  saved  her  from  misunder- 
standing. 

She  did  not  always  go  to  the  Gare  de  1'Est  every 
evening  now.  Sometimes  she  spent  them  in  the  little 
dormer-windowed  room  where  the  wife  of  the  New  York 
poilu  waited  for  her  baby.  Several  evenings  she  spent 
chasing  elusive  information  from  the  American  Ambu- 
lance Corps  as  to  exactly  the  conditions  in  which  a 
young  man  without  money  could  come  to  drive  an 
ambulance  in  France  .  .  .  the  young  man  without 
money  being  of  course  the  reporter  on  the  Marshallton 
Herald. 

It  chanced  to  be  on  one  of  the  evenings  when  she 
was  with  the  young  wife  that  the  need  came.  She 
sat  on  the  stairs  outside  till  nearly  morning.  When 
it  was  quiet,  she  took  the  little  new  citizen  of  the 
Republic  in  her  arms,  tears  of  mingled  thanksgiving 
and  dreadful  fear  raining  down  her  face,  because  an- 
other man-child  had  been  born  into  the  world.  Would 
he  grow  up  only  to  say  farewell  at  the  Gare  de  1'Est? 
Oh,  she  was  not  sorry  that  she  had  come  to  France  to 
help  in  that  war.  She  understood  now,  she  understood. 


A  LITTLE  KANSAS  LEAVEN  33 

It  was  Ellen  who  wrote  to  the  father  the  letter  an- 
nouncing the  birth  of  a  child  which  gave  him  the  right 
to  another  precious  short  furlough.  It  was  Ellen  who 
went  down  to  the  Gare  de  1'Est,  this  time  to  the  joyful 
wait  on  the  muddy  street  outside  the  side  door  from 
which  the  returning  permissionnaires  issued  forth, 
caked  with  mud  to  their  eyes.  It  was  Ellen  who  had 
never  before  "been  kissed  by  a  man"  who  was  caught 
in  a  pair  of  dingy,  horizon-blue  arms  and  soundly 
saluted  on  each  sallow  cheek  by  the  exultant  father. 
It  was  Ellen  who  was  made  as  much  of  a  godmother 
as  her  Protestant  affiliations  permitted  .  .  .  and  oh, 
it  was  Ellen  who  made  the  fourth  at  the  end  of  the 
furlough  when  (the  first  time  the  new  mother  had  left 
her  room)  they  went  back  to  the  Gare  de  1'Est.  At 
the  last  it  was  Ellen  who  held  the  sleeping  baby  when 
the  husband  took  his  wife  in  that  long,  bitter  embrace; 
it  was  Ellen  who  was  not  surprised  or  hurt  that  he 
turned  away  without  a  word  to  her  .  .  .  she  under- 
stood that  ...  it  was  Ellen  whose  arm  was  around 
the  trembling  young  wife  as  they  stood,  their  faces 
pressed  against  the  barrier  to  see  him  for  the  last  time; 
it  was  Ellen  who  went  back  with  her  to  the  silent 
desolation  of  the  little  room,  who  put  the  baby  into 
the  slackly  hanging  arms,  and  watched,  her  eyes  burn- 
ing with  unshed  tears,  those  arms  close  about  the  little 
new  inheritor  of  humanity's  woes.  .  .  . 

Four  months  from  the  time  she  landed  in  Paris  her 
money  was  almost  gone  and  she  was  quitting  the  city 
with  barely  enough  in  her  pocket  to  take  her  back  to 
Marshallton.  As  simply  as  she  had  come  to  Paris,  she 


34  A  LITTLE  KANSAS  LEAVEN 

now  went  home.  She  belonged  to  Marshallton.  It 
was  a  very  good  thing  for  Marshallton  that  she  did. 

She  gave  fifty  dollars  to  the  mother  of  baby  Jacques 
(that  was  why  she  had  so  very  little  left)  and  she  prom- 
ised to  send  her  ten  dollars  every  month  as  soon  as  she 
herself  should  be  again  a  wage-earner.  Mrs.  Putnam 
and  her  niece,  inconsolable  at  her  loss,  went  down  to 
the  Gare  du  Quai  d'Orsay  to  see  her  off,  looking  more 
in  keeping  with  the  elegant  travelers  starting  for  the 
Midi,  than  Ellen  did.  Her  place,  after  all,  had  been 
at  the  Gare  de  1'Est.  As  they  shook  hands  warmly 
with  her,  they  gave  her  a  beautiful  bouquet,  the  evi- 
dent cost  of  which  stabbed  her  to  the  heart.  What 
she  could  have  done  with  that  money! 

"You  have  simply  transformed  the  vestiaire,  Miss 
Boardman,"  said  Mrs.  Putnam  with  generous  but  by 
no  means  exaggerating  ardor.  "It  would  certainly 
have  sunk  under  the  waves  if  you  hadn't  come  to  the 
rescue.  I  wish  you  could  have  stayed,  but  thanks  to 
your  teaching  we'll  be  able  to  manage  anything  now." 

After  the  train  had  moved  off,  Mrs.  Putnam  said  to 
her  niece  in  a  shocked  voice:  "Third  class!  That  long 
trip  to  Bordeaux!  She'll  die  of  fatigue.  You  don't 
suppose  she  is  going  back  because  she  didn't  have  money 
enough  to  stay!  Why,  I  would  have  paid  anything  to 
keep  her."  The  belated  nature  of  this  reflection  shows 
that  Ellen's  teachings  had  never  gone  more  than  skin 
deep  and  that  there  was  still  something  lacking  in  Mrs. 
Putnam's  grasp  on  the  realities  of  contemporary  life. 

Ellen  was  again  too  horribly  seasick  to  suffer  much 
apprehension  about  submarines.  This  time  she  had  as 


A  LITTLE  KANSAS  LEAVEN  35 

cabin-mate  in  the  unventilated  second-class  cabin  the 
"companion"  of  a  great  lady  traveling  of  course  in  a 
suite  in  first-class.  This  great  personage,  when  in- 
formed by  her  satellites'  nimble  and  malicious  tongues 
of  Ellen's  personality  and  recent  errand  in  France, 
remarked  with  authority  to  the  group  of  people  about 
her  at  dinner,  embarking  upon  the  game  which  was 
the  seventh  course  of  the  meal :  "  I  disapprove  wholly 
of  these  foolish  American  volunteers  .  .  .  ignorant, 
awkward,  provincial  boors,  for  the  most  part,  knowing 
nothing  of  all  the  exquisite  old  traditions  of  France, 
who  thrust  themselves  forward.  They  make  America 
a  laughing-stock." 

Luckily,  Ellen,  pecking  feebly  at  the  chilly,  boiled 
potato  brought  her  by  an  impatient  stewardess,  could 
not  know  this  characterization. 

She  arrived  in  Marshallton,  and  was  astonished  to 
find  herself  a  personage.  Her  departure  had  made 
her  much  more  a  figure  in  the  town  life  than  she  had 
ever  been  when  she  was  still  walking  its  streets.  The 
day  after  her  departure  the  young  reporter  had  written 
her  up  in  the  Herald  in  a  lengthy  paragraph,  and  not  a 
humorous  one  either.  The  Sunday  which  she  passed 
on  the  ocean  after  she  left  New  York,  Mr.  Wentworth 
in  one  of  his  prayers  implored  the  Divine  blessing  on 
"one  of  our  number  who  has  left  home  and  safety  to 
fulfil  a  high  moral  obligation  and  who  even  now  is 
risking  death  in  the  pursuance  of  her  duty  as  she  con- 
ceives it."  Every  one  knew  that  he  meant  Ellen  Board- 
man,  about  whom  they  had  all  read  in  the  Herald. 
Mr.  Pennypacker  took,  then  and  there,  a  decision  which 


36  A  LITTLE  KANSAS  LEAVEN 

inexplicably  lightened  his  heart.  Being  a  good  business- 
man, he  did  not  keep  it  to  himself,  but  allowed  it  to 
leak  out  the  next  time  the  reporter  from  the  Herald 
dropped  around  for  chance  items  of  news.  The  re- 
porter made  the  most  of  it,  and  Marshallton,  already 
spending  much  of  its  time  in  discussing  Ellen,  read 
that  "Mr.  John  S.  Pennypacker,  in  view  of  the  high 
humanitarian  principles  animating  Miss  Boardman  in 
quitting  his  employ,  has  decided  not  to  fill  her  position 
but  to  keep  it  open  for  her  on  her  return  from  her 
errand  of  mercy  to  those  in  foreign  parts  stricken  by 
the  awful  war  now  devastating  Europe." 

Then  Ellen's  letters  began  to  arrive,  mostly  to 
Maggie,  who  read  them  aloud  to  the  deeply  interested 
boarding-house  circle.  The  members  of  this,  basking 
in  reflected  importance,  repeated  their  contents  to 
every  one  who  would  listen.  In  addition  the  young 
reporter  published  extracts  from  them  in  the  Herald, 
editing  them  artfully,  choosing  the  rare  plums  of 
anecdote  or  description  in  Ellen's  arid  epistolary  style. 
When  her  letter  to  him  came,  he  was  plunged  into 
despair  because  she  had  learned  that  he  would  have 
to  pay  part  of  his  expenses  if  he  drove  an  ambulance 
on  the  French  front.  By  that  time  his  sense  of  humor 
was  in  such  total  eclipse  that  he  saw  nothing  ridiculous 
in  the  fact  that  he  could  not  breathe  freely  another 
hour  in  the  easy  good-cheer  of  his  care-free  life.  He 
revolved  one  scheme  after  another  for  getting  money; 
and  in  the  meantime  let  no  week  go  by  without  giving 
some  news  from  their  "heroic  fellow-townswoman  in 
France."  Highland  Springs,  the  traditional  rival  and 


A  LITTLE  KANSAS  LEAVEN  37 

enemy  of  Marshallton,  felt  outraged  by  the  tone  of 
proprietorship  with  which  Marshallton  people  bragged 
of  their  delegate  in  France. 

So  it  happened  that  when  Ellen,  fearfully  tired,  fear- 
fully dusty  after  the  long  ride  in  the  day-coach,  and 
fearfully  shabby  in  exactly  the  same  clothes  she  had 
worn  away,  stepped  wearily  off  the  train  at  the  well- 
remembered  little  wooden  station,  she  found  not  only 
Maggie,  to  whom  she  had  telegraphed  from  New  York, 
but  a  large  group  of  other  people  advancing  upon  her 
with  outstretched  hands,  crowding  around  her  with 
more  respectful  consideration  than  she  had  ever 
dreamed  of  seeing  addressed  to  her  obscure  person. 
She  was  too  tired,  too  deeply  moved  to  find  herself  at 
home  again,  too  confused,  to  recognize  them  all. 
Indeed  a  number  of  them  knew  her  only  by  her  fame 
since  her  departure.  Ellen  made  out  Maggie,  who 
embraced  her,  weeping  as  loudly  as  when  she  had 
gone  away;  she  saw  Mrs.  Wilson  who  kissed  her  very 
hard  and  said  she  was  proud  to  know  her;  she  saw  with 
astonishment  that  Mr.  Pennypacker  himself  had  left 
business  in  office  hours!  He  shook  her  hand  with 
energy  and  said:  "Well,  Miss  Boardman,  very  glad  to 
see  you  safe  back.  We'll  be  expecting  you  back  at  the 
old  stand  just  as  soon  as  you've  rested  up  from  the 
trip."  The  intention  of  the  poilu  who  had  taken  her 
in  his  arms  and  kissed  her,  had  not  been  more  cordial. 
Ellen  knew  this  and  was  touched  to  tears. 

There  was  the  reporter  from  the  Herald,  too,  she  saw 
him  dimly  through  the  mist  before  her  eyes,  as  he  car- 
ried the  satchel,  the  same  he  had  carried  five  months 


3  8  A  LITTLE  KANSAS  LEAVEN 

before  with  the  same  things  in  it.  And  as  they  put 
her  in  the  "hack"  (she  had  never  ridden  in  the  hack 
before)  there  was  Mr.  Wentworth,  the  young  minister, 
who  leaned  through  the  window  and  said  earnestly: 
"I  am  counting  on  you  to  speak  to  our  people  in  the 
church  parlors.  You  must  tell  us  about  things  over 
there." 

Well,  she  did  speak  to  them!  She  was  not  the  same 
person,  you  see,  she  had  been  before  she  had  spent 
those  evenings  in  the  Gare  de  1'Est.  She  wanted  them 
to  know  about  what  she  had  seen,  and  because  there 
was  no  one  else  to  tell  them,  she  rose  up  in  her  shabby 
suit  and  told  them  herself.  The  first  thing  that  came 
into  her  mind  as  she  stood  before  them,  her  heart 
suffocating  her,  her  knees  shaking  under  her,  was  the 
strangeness  of  seeing  so  many  able-bodied  men  not  in 
uniform,  and  so  many  women  not  in  mourning.  She 
told  them  this  as  a  beginning  and  got  their  startled 
attention  at  once,  the  men  vaguely  uneasy,  the  women 
divining  with  frightened  sympathy  what  it  meant  to  see 
all  women  in  black. 

Then  she  went  on  to  tell  them  about  the  work  for 
the  refugees  .  .  .  not  for  nothing  had  she  made  out 
the  card-catalogue  accounts  of  those  life-histories. 
"There  was  one  old  woman  we  helped  .  .  .  she  looked 
some  like  Mrs.  Wilson's  mother.  She  had  lost  three 
sons  and  two  sons-in-law  in  the  war.  Both  of  her 
daughters,  widows,  had  been  sent  off  into  Germany 
to  do  forced  labor.  One  of  them  had  been  a  music- 
teacher  and  the  other  a  dressmaker.  She  had  three 
of  the  grandchildren  with  her.  Two  of  them  had  dis- 


A  LITTLE  KANSAS  LEAVEN  39 

appeared  .  .  .  just  lost  somewhere.  She  didn't  have 
a  cent  left,  the  Germans  had  taken  everything.  She 
was  sixty-seven  years  old  and  she  was  earning  the 
children's  living  by  doing  scrubwoman's  work  in  a 
slaughter-house.  She  had  been  a  school-teacher  when 
she  was  young. 

"There  were  five  little  children  in  one  family.  The 
mother  was  sort  of  out  of  her  mind,  though  the  doctors 
said  maybe  she  would  get  over  it.  They  had  been  under 
shell-fire  for  five  days,  and  she  had  seen  three  members 
of  her  family  die  there.  After  that  they  wandered 
around  in  the  woods  for  ten  days,  living  on  grass  and 
roots.  The  youngest  child  died  then.  The  oldest  girl 
was  only  ten  years  old,  but  she  took  care  of  them  all 
somehow  and  used  to  get  up  nights  when  her  mother  got 
crazy  thinking  the  shells  were  falling  again." 

Ellen  spoke  badly,  awkwardly,  haltingly.  She  told 
nothing  which  they  might  not  have  read,  perhaps  had 
read  in  some  American  magazine.  But  it  was  a  differ- 
ent matter  to  hear  such  stories  from  the  lips  of  Ellen 
Boardman,  born  and  brought  up  among  them.  Ellen 
Boardman  had  seen  those  people,  and  through  her  eyes 
Marshallton  looked  aghast  and  for  the  first  time  believed 
that  what  it  saw  was  real,  that  such  things  were  happen- 
ing to  real  men  and  women  like  themselves. 

When  she  began  to  tell  them  about  the  Gare  de  1'Est 
she  began  helplessly  to  cry,  but  she  would  not  stop  for 
that.  She  smeared  away  the  tears  with  her  handker- 
chief wadded  into  a  ball,  she  was  obliged  to  stop  fre- 
quently to  blow  her  nose  and  catch  her  breath,  but  she 
had  so  much  to  say  that  she  struggled  on,  saying  it  in  a 


40  A  LITTLE  KANSAS  LEAVEN 

shaking,  uncertain  voice,  quite  out  of  her  control. 
Standing  there  before  those  well-fed,  well-meaning, 
prosperous,  safe  countrymen  of  hers,  it  all  rose  before 
her  with  burning  vividness,  and  burningly  she  strove  to 
set  it  before  them.  It  had  all  been  said  far  better  than 
she  said  it,  eloquently  described  in  many  highly  paid 
newspaper  articles,  but  it  had  never  before  been  said 
so  that  Marshallton  understood  it.  Ellen  Boardman, 
graceless,  stammering,  inarticulate,  yet  spoke  to  them 
with  the  tongues  of  men  and  angels  because  she  spoke 
their  own  language.  In  the  very  real,  very  literal  and 
wholly  miraculous  sense  of  the  words,  she  brought  the 
war — home — to  them. 

When  she  sat  down  no  one  applauded.  The  women 
were  pale.  Some  of  them  had  been  crying.  The  men's 
faces  were  set  and  inexpressive.  Mr.  Wentworth  stood 
up  and  cleared  his  throat.  He  said  that  a  young  citizen 
of  their  town  (he  named  him,  the  young  reporter)  de- 
sired greatly  to  go  to  the  French  front  as  an  ambulance 
driver,  but  being  obliged  to  earn  his  living,  he  could  not 
go  unless  helped  out  on  his  expenses.  Miss  Board- 
man had  been  able  to  get  exact  information  about  that. 
Four  hundred  dollars  would  keep  him  at  the  front  for 
a  year.  He  proposed  that  a  contribution  should  be  taken 
up  to  that  end. 

He  himself  went  among  them,  gathering  the  contribu- 
tions which  were  given  in  silence.  While  he  counted 
them  afterwards,  the  young  reporter,  waiting  with  an 
anxious  face,  swallowed  repeatedly  and  crossed  and  un- 
crossed his  legs  a  great  many  times.  Before  he  had  fin- 
ished counting  the  minister  stopped,  reached  over  and 


A  LITTLE  KANSAS  LEAVEN  41 

gave  the  other  young  man  a  handclasp.    "I  envy  you," 
he  said. 

He  turned  to  the  audience  and  announced  that  he  had 
counted  almost  enough  for  their  purpose  when  he  had 
come  upon  a  note  from  Mr.  Pennypacker  saying  that 
he  would  make  up  any  deficit.  Hence  they  could  con- 
sider the  matter  settled.  "Very  soon,  therefore,  our 
town  will  again  be  represented  on  the  French  front." 

The  audience  stirred,  drew  a  long  breath,  and  broke 
into  applause. 

Whatever  the  rest  of  the  Union  might  decide  to  do, 
Marshallton,  Kansas,  had  come  into  the  war. 

DOROTHY  CANFIELD. 


II 

THE  SURVIVORS 

A  Memorial  Day  Story 

IN  the  year  1868,  when  Memorial  Day  was  instituted, 
Fosterville  had  thirty-five  men  in  its  parade.  Foster- 
ville  was  a  border  town;  in  it  enthusiasm  had  run  high, 
and  many  more  men  had  enlisted  than  those  required  by 
the  draft.  All  the  men  were  on  the  same  side  but  Adam 
Foust,  who,  slipping  away,  joined  himself  to  the  troops 
of  his  mother's  Southern  State.  It  could  not  have  been 
any  great  trial  for  Adam  to  fight  against  most  of  his 
companions  in  Fosterville,  for  there  was  only  one  of 
them  with  whom  he  did  not  quarrel.  That  one  was  his 
cousin  Henry,  from  whom  he  was  inseparable,  and  of 
whose  friendship  for  any  other  boys  he  was  intensely 
jealous.  Henry  was  a  frank,  open-hearted  lad  who 
would  have  lived  on  good  terms  with  the  whole  world 
if  Adam  had  allowed  him  to. 

Adam  did  not  return  to  Fosterville  until  the  morning 
of  the  first  Memorial  Day,  of  whose  establishment  he 
was  unaware.  He  had  been  ill  for  months,  and  it  was 
only  now  that  he  had  earned  enough  to  make  his  way 
home.  He  was  slightly  lame,  and  he  had  lost  two  fin- 
gers of  his  left  hand.  He  got  down  from  the  train  at  the 
station,  and  found  himself  at  once  in  a  great  crowd.  He 
knew  no  one,  and  no  one  seemed  to  know  him.  Without 

43 


44  THE  SURVIVORS 

asking  any  questions,  he  started  up  the  street.  He 
meant  to  go,  first  of  all,  to  the  house  of  his  cousin  Henry, 
and  then  to  set  about  making  arrangements  to  resume 
his  long-interrupted  business,  that  of  a  saddler,  which 
he  could  still  follow  in  spite  of  his  injury. 

As  he  hurried  along  he  heard  the  sound  of  band  music, 
and  realized  that  some  sort  of  a  procession  was  advanc- 
ing. With  the  throng  about  him  he  pressed  to  the  curb. 
The  tune  was  one  which  he  hated;  the  colors  he  hated 
also;  the  marchers,  all  but  one,  he  had  never  liked. 
There  was  Newton  Towne,  with  a  sergeant's  stripe  on 
his  blue  sleeve;  there  was  Edward  Green,  a  captain; 
there  was  Peter  Allinson,  a  color-bearer.  At  their  head, 
taller,  handsomer,  dearer  than  ever  to  Adam's  jealous 
eyes,  walked  Henry  Foust.  In  an  instant  of  forgetful- 
ness  Adam  waved  his  hand.  But  Henry  did  not  see; 
Adam  chose  to  think  that  he  saw  and  would  not  answer. 
The  veterans  passed,  and  Adam  drew  back  and  was 
lost  in  the  crowd. 

But  Adam  had  a  parade  of  his  own.  In  the  evening, 
when  the  music  and  the  speeches  were  over  and  the 
half-dozen  graves  of  those  of  Fosterville's  young  men 
who  had  been  brought  home  had  been  heaped  with  flow- 
ers, and  Fosterville  sat  on  doorsteps  and  porches  talking 
about  the  day,  Adam  put  on  a  gray  uniform  and  walked 
from  one  end  of  the  village  to  the  other.  These  were 
people  who  had  known  him  always;  the  word  flew  from 
step  to  step.  Many  persons  spoke  to  him,  some 
laughed,  and  a  few  jeered.  To  no  one  did  Adam  pay 
any  heed.  Past  the  house  of  Newton  Towne,  past  the 
store  of  Ed  Green,  past  the  wide  lawn  of  Henry  Foust, 


THE  SURVIVORS  45 

walked  Adam,  his  hands  clasped  behind  his  back,  as 
though  to  make  more  perpendicular  than  perpendicu- 
larity itself  that  stiff  backbone.  Henry  Foust  ran 
down  the  steps  and  out  to  the  gate. 

"Oh,  Adam!"  cried  he. 

Adam  stopped,  stock-still.  He  could  see  Peter  Allin- 
son  and  Newton  Towne,  and  even  Ed  Green,  on  Henry's 
porch.  They  were  all  having  ice-cream  and  cake  to- 
gether. 

"Well,  what?"  said  he,  roughly. 

"Won't  you  shake  hands  with  me?" 

"No,"  said  Adam. 

"Won't  you  come  in?" 

"Never." 

Still  Henry  persisted. 

"Some  one  might  do  you  harm,  Adam." 

"Let  them!"  said  Adam. 

Then  Adam  walked  on  alone.  Adam  walked  alone 
for  forty  years. 

Not  only  on  Memorial  Day  did  he  don  his  gray  uni- 
form and  make  the  rounds  of  the  village.  When  the 
Fosterville  Grand  Army  Post  met  on  Friday  evenings 
in  the  post  room,  Adam  managed  to  meet  most  of  the 
members  either  going  or  returning.  He  and  his  gray 
suit  became  gradually  so  familiar  to  the  village  that  no 
one  turned  his  head  or  glanced  up  from  book  or  paper 
to  see  him  go  by.  He  had  from  time  to  time  a  new  suit, 
and  he  ordered  from  somewhere  in  the  South  a  succes- 
sion of  gray,  broad-brimmed  military  hats.  The  farther 
the  war  sank  into  the  past,  the  straighter  grew  old 
Adam's  back,  the  prouder  his  head.  Sometimes,  early 


46  THE  SURVIVORS 

in  the  forty  years,  the  acquaintances  of  his  childhood, 
especially  the  women,  remonstrated  with  him. 

"The  war's  over,  Adam,"  they  would  say.  "Can't 
you  forget  it?" 

"Those  G.  A.  R.  fellows  don't  forget  it,"  Adam  would 
answer.  "They  haven't  changed  their  principles.  Why 
should  I  change  mine?" 

"  But  you  might  make  up  with  Henry." 

"That 's  nobody's  business  but  my  own." 

"But  when  you  were  children  you  were  never  sepa- 
rated. Make  up,  Adam." 

"When  Henry  needs  me,  I'll  help  him,"  said  Adam. 

"Henry  will  never  need  you.     Look  at  all  he's  got!" 

"Well,  then,  I  don't  need  him,"  declared  Adam,  as  he 
walked  away.  He  went  back  to  his  saddler  shop,  where 
he  sat  all  day  stitching.  He  had  ample  time  to  think  of 
Henry  and  the  past. 

"Brought  up  like  twins!"  he  would  say.  "Sharing 
like  brothers!  Now  he  has  a  fine  business  and  a  fine 
house  and  fine  children,  and  I  have  nothing.  But  I 
have  my  principles.  I  ain't  never  truckled  to  him. 
Some  day  he'll  need  me,  you  '11  see!" 

As  Adam  grew  older,  it  became  more  and  more  certain 
that  Henry  would  never  need  him  for  anything.  Henry 
tried  again  and  again  to  make  friends,  but  Adam  would 
have  none  of  him.  He  talked  more  and  more  to  himself 
as  he  sat  at  his  work. 

"Used  to  help  him  over  the  brook  and  bait  his 
hook  for  him.  Even  built  com-cob  houses  for  him  to 
knock  down,  that  much  littler  he  was  than  me.  Stepped 
out  of  the  race  when  I  found  he  wanted  Annie.  He 


THE  SURVIVORS  47 

might  ask  me  for  something!"  Adam  seemed  often  to  be 
growing  childish. 

By  the  year  1875  fifteen  of  Fosterville's  thirty-five 
veterans  had  died.  The  men  who  survived  the  war  were, 
for  the  most  part,  not  strong  men,  and  weaknesses  es- 
tablished in  prisons  and  on  long  marches  asserted  them- 
selves. Fifteen  times  the  Fosterville  Post  paraded  to 
the  cemetery  and  read  its  committal  service  and  fired  its 
salute.  For  these  parades  Adam  did  not  put  on  his  gray 
uniform. 

During  the  next  twenty  years  deaths  were  fewer. 
Fosterville  prospered  as  never  before;  it  built  factories 
and  an  electric  car  line.  Of  all  its  enterprises  Henry 
Foust  was  at  the  head.  He  enlarged  his  house  and 
bought  farms  and  grew  handsomer  as  he  grew  older. 
Everybody  loved  him;  all  Fosterville,  except  Adam, 
sought  his  company.  It  seemed  sometimes  as  though 
Adam  would  almost  die  from  loneliness  and  jealousy. 

"Henry  Foust  sittin'  with  Ed  Green!"  said  Adam  to 
himself,  as  though  he  could  never  accustom  his  eyes  to 
this  phenomenon.  "Henry  consortin'  with  Newt 
Towne ! " 

The  Grand  Army  Post  also  grew  in  importance.  It 
paraded  each  year  with  more  ceremony;  it  imported  fine 
music  and  great  speakers  for  Memorial  Day. 

Presently  the  sad  procession  to  the  cemetery  began 
once  more.  There  was  a  long,  cold  winter,  with  many 
cases  of  pneumonia,  and  three  veterans  succumbed; 
there  was  an  intensely  hot  summer,  and  twice  in  one 
month  the  post  read  its  committal  service  and  fired  its 
salute.  A  few  years  more,  and  the  post  numbered  but 


48  THE  SURVIVORS 

three.  Past  them  still  on  post  evenings  walked  Adam, 
head  in  air,  hands  clasped  behind  his  back.  There  was 
Edward  Green,  round,  fat,  who  puffed  and  panted; 
there  was  Newton  Towne,  who  walked,  in  spite  of  palsy, 
as  though  he  had  won  the  battle  of  Gettysburg;  there 
was,  last  of  all,  Henry  Foust,  who  at  seventy-five  was 
hale  and  strong.  Usually  a  tall  son  walked  beside  him, 
or  a  grandchild  clung  to  his  hand.  He  was  almost  never 
alone;  it  was  as  though  every  one  who  knew  him  tried 
to  have  as  much  as  possible  of  his  company.  Past  him 
with  a  grave  nod  walked  Adam.  Adam  was  two  years 
older  than  Henry;  it  required  more  and  more  stretch- 
ing of  arms  behind  his  back  to  keep  his  shoulders 
straight. 

In  April  Newton  Towne  was  taken  ill  and  died.  Ed- 
ward Green  was  terrified,  though  he  considered  himself, 
in  spite  of  his  shortness  of  breath,  a  strong  man. 

"Don't  let  anything  happen  to  you,  Henry,"  he  would 
say.  "Don't  let  anything  get  you,  Henry.  I  can't 
march  alone." 

"I'll  be  there,"  Henry  would  reassure  him.  Only 
one  look  at  Henry,  and  the  most  alarmed  would  have 
been  comforted. 

"It  would  kill  me  to  march  alone,"  said  Edward 
Green. 

As  if  Fosterville  realized  that  it  could  not  continue 
long  to  show  its  devotion  to  its  veterans,  it  made  this 
year  special  preparations  for  Memorial  Day.  The  Fos- 
terville Band  practiced  elaborate  music,  the  children 
were  drilled  in  marching.  The  children  were  to  precede 
the  veterans  to  the  cemetery  and  were  to  scatter  flowers 


THE  SURVIVORS  49 

over  the  graves.  Houses  were  gayly  decorated,  flags 
and  banners  floating  in  the  pleasant  spring  breeze. 
Early  in  the  morning  carriages  and  wagons  began  to 
bring  in  the  country  folk. 

Adam  Foust  realized  as  well  as  Fosterville  that  the 
parades  of  veterans  were  drawing  to  their  close. 

"This  may  be  the  last  time  I  can  show  my  prin- 
ciples," said  he,  with  grim  setting  of  his  lips.  "I  will 
put  on  my  gray  coat  early  in  the  morning." 

Though  the  two  veterans  were  to  march  to  the 
cemetery,  carriages  were  provided  to  bring  them  home. 
Fosterville  meant  to  be  as  careful  as  possible  of  its 
treasures. 

"I  don't  need  any  carriage  to  ride  in,  like  Ed  Green," 
said  Adam  .proudly.  "I  could  march  out  and  back. 
Perhaps  Ed  Green  will  have  to  ride  out  as  well  as 
back." 

But  Edward  Green  neither  rode  nor  walked.  The 
day  turned  suddenly  warm,  the  heat  and  excitement 
accelerated  his  already  rapid  breathing,  and  the  doctor 
forbade  his  setting  foot  to  the  ground. 

"But  I  will!"  cried  Edward,  in  whom  the  spirit  of 
war  still  lived. 

"No,"  said  the  doctor. 

"Then  I  will  ride." 

"You  will  stay  in  bed,"  said  the  doctor. 

So  without  Edward  Green  the  parade  was  formed. 
Before  the  court-house  waited  the  band,  and  the  long 
line  of  school-children,  and  the  burgess,  and  the  fire 
company,  and  the  distinguished  stranger  who  was  to 
make  the  address,  until  Henry  Foust  appeared,  in  his 


So  THE  SURVIVORS 

blue  suit,  with  his  flag  on  his  breast  and  his  bouquet  in 
his  hand.  On  each  side  of  him  walked  a  tall,  middle- 
aged  son,  who  seemed  to  hand  him  over  reluctantly 
to  the  marshal,  who  was  to  escort  him  to  his  place. 
Smilingly  he  spoke  to  the  marshal,  but  he  was  the 
only  one  who  smiled  or  spoke.  For  an  instant  men 
and  women  broke  off  in  the  middle  of  their  sentences,  a 
husky  something  in  their  throats;  children  looked  up 
at  him  with  awe.  Even  his  own  grandchildren  did 
not  dare  to  wave  or  call  from  their  places  in  the  ranks. 
Then  the  storm  of  cheers  broke. 

Round  the  next  corner  Adam  Foust  waited.  He 
was  clad  in  his  gray  uniform — those  who  looked  at 
him  closely  saw  with  astonishment  that  it  was  a  new 
uniform;  his  brows  met  in  a  frown,  his  gray  moustache 
seemed  to  bristle. 

"How  he  hates  them!"  said  one  citizen  of  Foster- 
ville  to  another.  "Just  look  at  poor  Adam!" 

"Used  to  bait  his  hook  forjiim,"  Adam  was  saying. 
"Used  to  carry  him  pick-a-back!  Used  to  go  halves 
with  him  on  everything.  Now  he  walks  with  Ed 
Green!" 

Adam  pressed  forward  to  the  curb.  The  band  was 
playing  "Marching  Through  Georgia,"  which  he 
hated;  everybody  was  cheering.  The  volume  of  sound 
was  deafening. 

"Cheering  Ed  Green!"  said  Adam.  "Fat!  Lazy! 
Didn't  have  a  wound.  Dare  say  he  hid  behind  a  tree! 
Dare  say " 

The  band  was  in  sight  now,  the  back  of  the  drum- 
major  appeared,  then  all  the  musicians  swung  round 


THE  SURVIVORS  51 

the  corner.  After  them  came  the  little  children  with 
their  flowers  and  their  shining  faces. 

"Him  and  Ed  Green  next,"  said  old  Adam. 

But  Henry  walked  alone.  Adam's  whole  body 
jerked  in  his  astonishment.  He  heard  some  one  say 
that  Edward  Green  was  sick,  that  the  doctor  had 
forbidden  him  to  march,  or  even  to  ride.  *As  he  pressed 
nearer  the  curb  he  heard  the  admiring  comments  of 
the  crowd. 

"Isn't  he  magnificent!" 

"See  his  beautiful  flowers!  His  grandchildren  al- 
ways send  him  his  flowers." 

"He's  our  first  citizen." 

"He's  mine!"  Adam  wanted  to  cry  out.  "He's 
mine!" 

Never  had  Adam  felt  so  miserable,  so  jealous,  so 
heartsick.  His  eyes  were  filled  with  the  great  figure. 
Henry  was,  in  truth,  magnificent,  not  only  in  himself, 
but  in  what  he  represented.  He  seemed  symbolic  of  a 
great  era  of  the  past,  and  at  the  same  time  of  a  new 
age  which  was  advancing.  Old  Adam  understood  all 
his  glory. 

"He's  mine!  said  old  Adam  again,  foolishly. 

Then  Adam  leaned  forward  with  startled,  staring 
eyes.  Henry  had  bowed  and  smiled  in  answer  to  the 
cheers.  Across  the  street  his  own  house  was  a  mass 
of  color — red,  white,  and  blue  over  windows  and  doors, 
gay  dresses  on  the  porch.  On  each  side  the  pavement 
was  crowded  with  a  shouting  multitude.  Surely  no 
hero  had  ever  had  a  more  glorious  passage  through 
the  streets  of  his  birthplace! 


52  THE  SURVIVORS 

But  old  Adam  saw  that  Henry's  face  blanched,  that 
there  appeared  suddenly  upon  it  an  expression  of  in- 
tolerable pain.  For  an  instant  Henry's  step  faltered 
and  grew  uncertain.  • 

Then  old  Adam  began  to  behave  like  a  wild  man. 
He  pushed  himself  through  the  crowd,  he  flung  himself 
upon  the  rope  as  though  to  tear  it  down,  he  called  out, 
"Wait!  wait!"  Frightened  women,  fearful  of  some 
sinister  purpose,  tried  to  grasp  and  hold  him.  No 
man  was  immediately  at  hand,  or  Adam  would  have 
been  seized  and  taken  away.  As  for  the  feeble  women — 
Adam  shook  them  off  and  laughed  at  them. 

"Let  me  go,  you  geese!"  said  he. 

A  mounted  marshal  saw  him  and  rode  down  upon 
him;  men  started  from  under  the  ropes  to  pursue  him. 
But  Adam  eluded  them  or  outdistanced  them.  He 
strode  across  an  open  space  with  a  surety  which  gave 
no  hint  of  the  terrible  beating  of  his  heart,  until  he 
reached  the  side  of  Henry.  Him  he  greeted,  breath- 
lessly and  with  terrible  eagerness. 

"Henry,"  said  he,  gasping,  "Henry,  do  you  want 
me  to  walk  along  ? " 

Henry  saw  the  alarmed  crowds,  he  saw  the  marshal's 
hand  stretched  to  seize  Adam,  he  saw  most  clearly  of 
all  the  tearful  eyes  under  the  beetling  brows.  Henry's 
voice  shook,  but  he  made  himself  clear. 

"It's  all  right,"  said  he  to  the  marshal.  "Let  him 
be." 

"  I  saw  you  were  alone,"  said  Adam.  "  I  said, '  Henry 
needs  me.'  I  know  what  it  is  to  be  alone.  I " 

But  Adam  did  not  finish  his  sentence.    He  found  a 


THE  SURVIVORS  53 

hand  on  his,  a  blue  arm  linked  tightly  in  his  gray  arm, 
he  felt  himself  moved  along  amid  thunderous  roars  of 
sound. 

"Of  course  I  need  you!"  said  Henry.  "I've  needed 
you  all  along." 

Then,  old  but  young,  their  lives  almost  ended,  but 
themselves  immortal,  united,  to  be  divided  no  more, 
amid  an  ever-thickening  sound  of  cheers,  the  two 
marched  down  the  street. 

— ELSIE   SlNGMASTER. 


Ill 

THE  WILDCAT 

WHEN  Cassius  Wyble  came  down  from  his  moun- 
tains to  the  2OOO-population  metropolis  of  Clayburg 
on  his  half-yearly  trip  for  supplies  he  thought  the  old 
custom  of  Muster  Day  had  been  revived. 

No  fewer  than  eleven  men  in  khaki  were  lounging 
round  the  station  platform  or  sitting  on  the  steps  of 
the  North  America  general  store.  Enlistment  posters, 
too,  flared  from  windows  and  walls. 

These  posters — except  for  their  pretty  pictures — 
meant  nothing  at  all  to  Cash  Wyble.  For,  as  with  his 
parents  and  grandparents,  his  knowledge  of  the  written 
or  printed  word  was  purely  a  matter  of  hearsay. 

Yet  the  sight  of  the  eleven  men  in  newfangled  uni- 
form— so  like  in  color  to  his  own  butternut  homespuns — 
interested  Cash. 

"What's  all  the  boys  doin* — togged  up  thataway?" 
he  demanded  of  the  North  America's  proprietor. 
"Waitin'  for  the  band?" 

"Waiting  to  be  shipped  to  Camp  Lee,"  answered  the 
local  merchant  prince;  adding,  as  Cash's  burnt-leather 
face  grew  blanker:  "Camp  Lee,  down  in  V'ginia,  you 
know.  Training  camp  for  the  war." 

"War?"  queried  Cash,  preparing  to  grin,  at  prospect 
of  a  joke.  "  What  war  ? " 

55 


S6  THE  WILDCAT 

"What  war?"  echoed  the  dumfounded  storekeeper. 
"Why,  the  war,  of  course!  Where  in  blazes  have  you 
been  keeping  yourself?" 

"I  been  up  home,  where  I  b'long,"  said  Cash  sulkily. 
"What  with  the  hawgs,  an'  crops  an'  skins  an'  sich,  a 
busy  man's  got  no  time  traipsin'  off  to  the  city  every 
minute.  Twice  a  year  does  me  pretty  nice.  An'  now 
s'pose  you  tell  me  what  war  you're  blattin'  about." 

The  storekeeper  told  him.  He  told  him  in  the  sim- 
plest possible  language.  Yet  half — and  more  than 
half — of  the  explanation  went  miles  above  the  listening 
mountaineer's  head.  Cash  gathered,  however,  that 
the  United  States  was  fighting  Germany. 

Germany  he  knew  by  repute  for  a  country  or  a 
town  on  the  far  side  of  the  world.  Some  of  its  citizens 
had  even  invaded  his  West  Virginia  mountains,  where 
their  odd  diction  and  porcelain  pipes  roused  much 
derision  among  the  cultured  hillfolk. 

"Germany?"  mused  Cash  when  the  narrative  was 
ended.  "We're  to  war  with  Germany,  hey?  Sakes, 
but  I  wisht  I'd  knowed  that  yesterday!  A  couple  of 
Germans  went  right  past  my  shack.  I  could  'a'  shot 
'em  as  easy  as  toad  pie." 

The  North  America's  proprietor  valued  Cash  Wyble's 
sparse  trade,  as  he  valued  that  of  other  mountaineers 
who  made  Clayburg  their  semiannual  port  of  call. 
If  on  Cash's  report  these  rustics  should  begin  a  guerilla 
warfare  upon  their  German  neighbors,  more  of  them 
would  presently  be  lodged  in  jail  than  the  North  Amer- 
ica could  well  afford  to  spare  from  its  meager  customer 
list. 


THE  WILDCAT  57 

Wherefore  the  proprietor  did  some  more  explaining. 
Knowing  the  mountaineer  brain,  he  made  no  effort 
to  point  out  the  difference  between  armed  Germans 
and  noncombatants.  He  merely  said  that  the  Govern- 
ment had  threatened  to  lock  up  any  West  Virginian 
who  should  kill  a  German — this  side  of  Europe.  It 
was  a  new  law,  he  continued,  and  one  that  the  revenue 
officers  were  bent  on  enforcing. 

Cash  sighed  and  reluctantly  bade  farewell  to  an 
alluring  dream  that  had  begun  to  shape  itself  in  his 
simple  brain — a  dream  of  "laying  out"  in  cliff-top 
brush,  waiting  with  true  elephant  patience  until  a 
German  neighbor  should  stroll,  unsuspecting,  along 
the  trail  below  and  should  move  slowly  within  range 
of  the  antique  Wyble  rifle. 

It  was  a  sweet  fantasy,  and  hard  to  banish.  For 
Cash  certainly  could  shoot.  There  was  scarce  a  man 
in  the  Cumberlands  or  the  Appalachians  who  could 
outshoot  him.  Shooting  and  a  native  knack  at  moon- 
shining  were  Cash's  only  real  accomplishments. 
Whether  stalking  a  shy  old  stag  or  potting  a  revenue 
officer  on  the  sky  line,  the  man's  aim  was  uncannily 
true.  In  a  region  of  born  marksmen  his  skill  stood 
forth  supreme. 

He  felt  not  the  remotest  hatred  for  any  of  these 
local  Germans.  In  an  impersonal  way  he  rather  liked 
one  or  two  of  them.  Yet,  if  the  law  had  really  been 
off- 

The  zest  of  the  man  hunt  tingled  pleasantly  in  the 
marksman's  blood.  And  he  resented  this  unfair  new 
revenue  ruling,  which  permitted  and  even  encouraged 


S8  THE  WILDCAT 

the  killing  of  Germans  in  Europe  and  yet  ordained  a 
closed  season  on  them  in  West  Virginia.  Still,  there 
was  no  sense  in  a  busy  man's  risking  jail  or  a  fine  by 
indulging  his  sporting  tastes.  So  Cash  tried  to  forget 
the  temptation,  and  proceeded  to  the  more  material 
task  of  trafficking  for  his  next  half  year's  supplies. 

A  few  months  later  the  draft  caught  Cash  Wyble  and 
carried  him  away  in  its  swirling  flood,  depositing  him 
in  due  time,  with  a  quantity  of  similar  mountaineer 
flotsam,  in  the  training  mill  of  Camp  Lee. 

No  half-grown  wildcat  dragged  by  the  scruff  of  the 
neck  from  the  sanctuary  of  its  tree  hole  was  ever  one- 
tenth  so  ragingly  indignant  as  was  Cash  at  his  im- 
pressment into  his  country's  service.  Born  and  bred 
of  fellow  illiterates  in  the  wildest  corner  of  the  Cumber- 
land Range,  thirty-two  miles  from  the  nearest  railroad, 
he  knew  nothing  and  cared  less  about  the  affairs  of 
the  world  that  lay  beyond  the  circling  blue  mountain 
walls. 

To  Cash  all  persons  who  lived  outside  that  circle 
were  "Foreigners,"  even  if  their  habitat  was  the  ad- 
joining county  of  his  own  state. 

He  had  heard  of  England  and  of  France  and  of 
Europe,  in  much  the  same  vague  fashion  as  he  had 
heard  of  Germany.  He  knew  the  name  of  the  President 
of  the  United  States;  of  the  governor  of  West  Virginia; 
of  the  mayor  of  Clayburg.  Also  of  the  political  party 
whose  ticket  his  father  had  always  voted,  and  which 
Cash,  in  consequence,  voted.  He  knew  there  had  been 
a  Civil  War  and — from  pictures  and  from  paternal 
description — he  knew  the  types  of  uniforms  each  side 


THE  WILDCAT  59 

had  worn.  The  foregoing  facts  comprised  his  total 
knowledge  of  American  politics  and  of  world  history. 

As  to  the  causes  and  the  occasion  and  the  stakes  of 
the  present  war  he  had  not  an  inkling.  Nor  could  the 
explanations  of  slightly  better-informed  recruits  make 
the  matter  much  clearer  to  him.  It  most  certainly 
roused  no  trace  of  enthusiasm  or  of  patriotism  in  his 
indignant  breast.  All  he  knew  or  was  interested  in 
was  that  he  had  been  forced  to  leave  his  shack  and  his 
straggly  mountain-side  farm  and  his  hidden  moon- 
shine still,  at  the  very  worst  possible  season  for  leaving 
any  of  them. 

He  had  been  coerced  into  riding  innumerable  miles 
to  a  foreigner  state  that  seemed  all  bottomland,  and 
there  was  herded  with  more  men  than  he  had  known 
were  on  earth.  He  had  been  dressed  in  an  amazing 
suit;  made  to  wear  socks  and  underclothes  for  the 
first  time  in  his  life;  and  daily  put  through  a  series  of 
physical  evolutions  whose  import  was  a  sealed  book 
to  him.  In  all  weathers,  too,  he  must  wear  shoes. 

Like  the  aforesaid  caught  wildcat  Cash  Wyble  re- 
belled at  every  inch  of  the  way.  For  his  first  two 
months  of  captivity  he  spent  more  time  in  the  guard- 
house than  out  of  it.  On  his  first  day  at  camp  he  tried 
to  thrash  a  lieutenant  who  was  lining  up  a  rawly 
shambling  company  and  who  spoke  with  unwelcomed 
sharpness  to  the  mountaineer.  Scarce  had  Cash  atoned 
for  this  crime  when  he  succeeded  in  giving  a  very 
creditable  thrashing  to  a  sergeant  who  was  teaching 
his  squad  the  mysteries  of  'bout  face. 

Hearing  that  the  near-by  city  of  Petersburg  was 


60  THE  WILDCAT 

larger  than  Clayburg — which  he  knew  to  be  the  biggest 
metropolis  in  America — Cash  set  out  to  nail  the  lie 
by  a  personal  inspection  of  Petersburg.  He  neglected 
to  apply  for  leave,  so  was  held  up  by  the  first  sentinel 
he  met. 

Cash  explained  very  politely  his  reason  for  quitting 
camp.  But  the  pig-headed  sentinel  still  refused  to  let 
him  pass.  Two  minutes  later  a  fast-summoned  cor- 
poral and  two  men  were  using  all  their  strength  to  pry 
Wyble  loose  from  the  luckless  sentry.  And  again  the 
guardhouse  had  Cash  as  a  transient  and  blasphemous 
guest. 

He  was  learning  much  more  of  kitchen-police  work 
than  of  guard  mount.  At  the  latter  task  he  was  a 
failure.  The  first  night  he  was  assigned  to  beat  pacing, 
the  relief  found  him  restfully  snoring,  on  his  back,  his 
rifle  stuck  up  in  front  of  him  by  means  of  its  bayonet 
thrust  into  the  ground.  Cash  had  seen  no  good  reason 
why  he  should  walk  to  and  fro  for  hours  when  there 
was  nothing  exciting  to  watch  for  and  when  he  had 
been  awake  since  early  morning.  Therefore  he  had 
gone  to  sleep.  And  his  subsequent  guardhouse  stay 
filled  him  with  uncomprehending  fury. 

The  salute,  too,  struck  him  as  the  height  of  absurd- 
ity— as  a  bit  of  tomfoolery  in  which  he  would  have  no 
part.  Not  that  he  was  exclusive,  but  what  was  the 
use  of  touching  one's  forelock  to  some  officer  one  had 
never  before  met?  He  was  willing  to  nod  pleasantly 
and  even  to  say  "Howdy,  Cap?"  when  his  company 
captain  passed  by  him  for  the  first  time  in  the  morning. 
But  he  saw  no  use  in  repeating  that  or  any  other  form 


THE  WILDCAT  61 

of  salutation  when  the  same  captain  chanced  to  meet 
him  a  bare  fifteen  minutes  later. 

Cash  Wyble's  case  was  not  in  any  way  unique  among 
Camp  Lee's  thirty  thousand  new  soldiers.  Hundreds 
of  mountaineers  were  in  still  worse  mental  plight. 
And  the  tact  as  well  as  the  skill  of  their  officers 
was  strained  well-nigh  to  the  breaking  point  in 
shaping  the  amorphous  backwoods  rabble  into  trim 
soldiers. 

Not  all  members  of  the  mountain  draft  were  so 
fiercely  resentful  as  was  Cash.  But  many  others  of 
them  were  like  unbroken  colts.  The  strange  frequency 
of  washing  and  of  shaving,  and  the  wearing  of  under- 
clothes were  their  chief  puzzles. 

The  company  captain  labored  with  Cash  again  and 
again,  pointing  out  the  need  of  neat  cleanliness,  of 
promptitude,  of  vigilance;  trying  to  make  him  under- 
stand that  a  salute  is  not  a  sign  of  servility;  seeking  to 
imbue  him  with  the  spirit  of  patriotism  and  of  discipline. 
But  to  Cash  the  whole  thing  was  infinitely  worse  and 
more  bewildering  than  had  been  the  six  months  he  had 
once  spent  in  Clayburg  jail  for  mayhem. 

Three  things  alone  mitigated  his  misery  at  Camp  Lee: 
The  first  was  the  shooting;  the  second  was  his  monthly 
pay — which  represented  more  real  money  than  he  ever 
had  had  in  his  pocket  at  any  one  time;  the  third  was 
the  food — amazing  in  its  abundance  and  luxurious 
variety,  to  the  always-hungry  mountaineer. 

But  presently  the  target  shooting  palled.  As  soon  as 
he  had  mastered  carefully  the  intricacies  of  the  queer 
new  rifle  they  gave  him,  the  hours  at  the  range  were 


62  THE  WILDCAT 

no  more  inspiring  to  him  than  would  be,  to  Paderewski, 
the  eternal  playing  of  the  scale  of  C  with  one  finger. 

To  Cash  the  target  shooting  was  child's  play.  Once 
he  grasped  the  rules  as  to  sights  and  elevations  and 
became  used  to  the  feel  of  the  army  rifle,  the  rest  was 
drearily  simple. 

He  could  outshoot  practically  every  man  at  Camp 
Lee.  This  gave  him  no  pride.  He  made  himself  popu- 
lar with  men  who  complimented  him  on  it  by  assuring 
them  modestly  that  he  outshot  them  not  because  he 
was  such  a  dead  shot  but  because  they  shot  so  badly. 

The  headiest  colt  in  time  will  learn  the  lesson  of  the 
breaking  pen.  And  Cash  Wyble  gradually  became  a 
soldier.  At  least  he  learned  the  drill  and  the  regulations 
and  how  to  keep  out  of  the  guardhouse — except  just 
after  pay  day;  and  his  lank  figure  took  on  a  certain 
military  spruceness.  But  under  the  surface  he  was  still 
Cash  Wyble.  He  behaved,  because  there  was  no  in- 
centive at  the  camp  that  made  disobedience  worth 
while. 

Then  after  an  endless  winter  came  the  journey  to  the 
seaboard  and  the  embarkation  for  France;  and  the 
awesome  sight  of  a  tossing  gray  ocean  a  hundred  times 
wider  and  rougher  than  Clayburg  River  in  freshet  time. 
Followed  a  week  of  agonized  terror,  mingled  with  an 
acute  longing  to  die.  Then  ensued  a  week  of  calm 
water,  during  which  one  might  refill  the  oft-emptied 
inner  man. 

A  few  days  later  Cash  was  bumping  along  a  newly 
repaired  French  railway  in  a  car  whose  announced  ca- 
pacity was  forty  men  or  eight  horses.  And  thence  to 


THE  WILDCAT  63 

billet  in  a  half-wrecked  village,  where  his  regiment  was 
drilled  and  redrilled  in  the  things  they  had  toiled  so 
hard  at  Camp  Lee  to  master,  and  in  much  that  was 
novel  to  the  men. 

Cash  next  came  to  a  halt  in  a  network  of  trenches 
overlooking  a  stretch  of  country  that  had  been  tortured 
into  hideousness — a  region  that  looked  like  a  Dore 
nightmare.  It  was  a  waste  of  hillocks  and  gullies  and 
shell  holes  and  blasted  big  trees  and  frayed  copses  and 
split  bowlders  and  seared  vegetation.  When  Cash 
heard  it  was  called  No  Man's  Land  he  was  not  surprised. 
He  well  understood  why  no  man — not  even  an  ignorant 
foreigner — cared  to  buy  such  a  tract. 

He  was  far  more  interested  in  hearing  that  a  tangle  of 
trenches,  somewhat  like  his  regiment's  own,  lay  three 
miles  northeastward,  at  the  limit  of  No  Man's  Land,  and 
that  those  trenches  were  infested  with  Germans. 

Germans  were  the  people  Cash  Wyble  had  come  all 
the  way  to  France  to  kill.  And  once  more  the  thrill  of 
the  man  hunt  swept  pleasantly  through  his  blood.  He 
had  no  desire  to  risk  prison.  So  he  had  made  very 
certain  by  repeated  inquiry  that  this  particular  section 
of  France  was  in  Europe;  and  that  no  part  of  it  was 
within  the  boundaries  or  the  jurisdiction  of  the  sover- 
eign state  of  West  Virginia.  Here,  therefore,  the  law 
was  off  on  Germans,  and  he  could  not  get  into  the 
slightest  trouble  with  the  hated  revenue  officers  by 
shooting  as  many  of  the  foe  as  he  could  go  out  and  find. 

Cash  enjoyed  the  picture  he  conjured  up — a  picture  of 
a  whole  bevy  of  Germans  seated  at  ease  in  a  trench, 
smoking  porcelain  pipes  and  conversing  with  one  an- 


64  THE  WILDCAT, 

other  in  comically  broken  English;  of  himself  stealing 
toward  them,  and  from  the  shelter  of  one  of  those 
hillock  bowlders  opening  a  mortal  fire  on  the  unsus- 
pecting foreigners. 

It  was  a  quaint  thought,  and  one  that  Cash  loved  to 
play  with. 

Also  it  had  an  advantage  that  most  of  Cash's  vivid 
mind  pictures  had  not.  For,  in  part,  it  came  true. 

The  Germans,  on  the  thither  side  of  No  Man's  Land, 
seemed  bent  on  jarring  the  repose  and  wrenching  the 
nerve  of  their  lately  arrived  Yankee  neighbors.  Not 
only  were  those  veteran  official  entertainers,  Minnie 
and  Bertha,  and  their  equally  vocal  artillery  sisters 
called  into  service  for  the  purpose,  but  a  dense  swarm 
of  snipers  were  also  impressed  into  the  task. 

Now  this  especial  reach  of  No  Man's  Land  was  a  veri- 
table snipers'  paradise.  There  was  cover — plenty  of 
it — everywhere.  A  hundred  sharpshooters  of  any  scout- 
ing prowess  at  all  could  deploy  at  will  amid  the  tumble 
of  bowlders  and  knolls  and  twisted  tree  trunks  and 
battered  foliage  and  craters. 

The  long  spell  of  wet  weather  had  precluded  the 
burning  away  of  undergrowth.  There  were  tree  tops 
and  hill  summits  whence  a  splendid  shot  could  be 
taken  at  unwary  Americans  in  the  lower  front-line 
trenches  and  along  the  rising  ground  at  the  rear  of  the 
Yankee  lines.  Yes,  it  was  a  stretch  of  ground  laid  out 
for  the  joy  of  snipers.  And  the  German  sharpshooters 
took  due  advantage  of  this  bit  of  luck.  The  whine  of  a 
high-power  bullet  was  certain  to  follow  the  momentary 
exposure  of  any  portion  of  khaki  anatomy  above  or 


THE  WILDCAT  65 

behind  the  parapets.  And  in  disgustingly  many  in- 
stances the  bullet  did  not  whine  in  vain.  All  of  which 
kept  the  newcomers  from  getting  any  excess  joy  out 
of  trench  life. 

To  mitigate  the  annoyance  there  was  a  call  for  volun- 
teer sharpshooters  to  scout  cautiously  through  No 
Man's  Land  and  seek  to  render  the  boche  sniping  a  less 
safe  and  exhilarating  sport  than  thus  far  it  had  been. 
The  job  was  full  of  peril,  of  course.  For  there  was  a 
more  than  even  chance  of  the  Yankee  snipers'  being 
sniped  by  the  rival  sharpshooters,  who  were  better  ac- 
quainted with  the  ground. 

Yet  at  the  first  call  there  was  a  clamorous  throng  of 
volunteers.  Many  of  these  volunteers  admitted  under 
pressure  that  they  knew  nothing  of  scout  work  and  that 
they  had  not  so  much  as  qualified  in  marksmanship. 
But  they  craved  a  chance  at  the  boche.  And  grouchily 
did  they  resent  the  swift  weeding-out  process  that  left 
their  services  uncalled  for. 

Cash  Wyble  was  the  first  man  accepted  for  the  dan- 
gerous detail.  And  for  the  first  time  since  the  draft 
had  caught  him  his  burnt-leather  face  expanded  into 
a  grin  that  could  not  have  been  wider  unless  his  flaring 
ears  had  been  set  back. 

With  two  days'  rations  and  a  goodly  store  of  car- 
tridges he  fared  forth  that  night  into  No  Man's  Land. 
Dawn  was  not  yet  fully  gray  when  the  first  crack  of  his 
rifle  was  wafted  back  to  the  trenches. 

Then  the  artillery  firing,  which  was  part  of  the  day's 
work,  set  in.  And  its  racket  drowned  the  noise  of  any 
shooting  that  Cash  might  be  at. 


66  THE  WILDCAT 

Forty-eight  hours  passed.  At  dawn  of  the  third  day 
Cash  came  back  to  camp.  He  was  tired  and  horribly 
thirsty;  but  his  lantern-jawed  visage  was  one  unmarred 
mask  of  bliss. 

"Twelve,"  he  reported  tersely  to  his  captain.  "At 
least,"  he  continued  in  greater  detail,  "twelve  that  I'm 
dead  sure  of.  Nice  big  ones,  too,  some  of  'em." 

"Nice  big  ones!"  repeated  the  captain  in  admiring 
disgust.  "You  talk  as  if  you'd  been  after  wild  turkeys!" 

"A  heap  better'n  wild-turkey  shootin'!"  grinned 
Cash.  "An*  I  got  twelve  that  I'm  sure  of.  There  was 
one,  though,  I  couldn't  get.  A  he-one,  at  that.  He's 
sure  some  German,  that  feller!  He's  as  crafty  as  they 
make  'em.  I  couldn't  ever  come  up  to  him  or  get  a  line 
on  him.  I'll  bet  I  throwed  away  thutty  ca'tridges  on 
jes'  that  one  Dutchy.  An'  by  an'  by  he  found  out 
what  I  was  arter.  Then  there  was  fun,  Cap !  Him  and 
I  did  have  one  fine  shootin'  match !  But  I  was  as  good 
at  hidin'  as  he  was.  And  there  couldn't  neither  one  of 
us  seem  to  git  'tother.  Most  of  the  rest  of  'em  was  as 
easy  to  git  as  a  settin'  hen.  But  not  him.  I'd  'a'  laid 
out  there  longer  for  a  crack  at  him  but  I  couldn't  find 
no  water.  If  there'd  been  a  spring  or  a  water  seep  any- 
wheres there  I'd  'a*  stayed  till  doomsday  but  what  I'd 
'a'  got  him.  Soon's  I  fill  up  with  some  water  I'm 
goin'  back  arter  him.  He's  well  wuth  it.  I'll  bet 
that  cuss  don't  weigh  an  ounce  under  two  hundred 
pound." 

Cash's  smug  joy  in  his  exploit  and  his  keen  anticipa- 
tion of  a  return  trip  were  dashed  by  the  captain's  re- 
minder that  war  is  not  a  hunting  jaunt;  and  that  Wyble 


THE  WILDCAT  67 

must  return  to  his  loathed  trench  duties  until  such 
time  as  it  should  seem  wise  to  those  above  him  to  send 
him  forth  again. 

Cash  could  not  make  head  or  tail  out  of  such  a  com- 
mand. After  months  of  grinding  routine  he  had  at  last 
found  a  form  of  recreation  that  not  only  dulled  his 
sharply  constant  homesickness  but  that  made  up  for 
all  he  had  gone  through.  And  now  he  was  told  he 
could  go  forth  on  such  delightful  excursions  only  when 
he  might  chance  to  be  sent! 

Red  wrath  boiled  hot  in  the  soul  of  Cash  Wyble.  Ex- 
perience had  taught  him  the  costly  folly  of  venting  such 
rage  on  a  commissioned  officer.  So  he  hunted  up  Top 
Sergeant  Mahan  of  his  own  company  and  laid  his  griefs 
before  that  patient  veteran. 

Top  Sergeant  Mahan — formerly  of  the  Regular  Army 
— listened  with  true  sympathy  to  the  complaint;  and 
listened  with  open  enthusiasm  to  the  tale  of  the  two 
days  of  forest  skulking.  But  he  could  offer  no  help 
in  the  matter  of  returning  to  the  battue. 

"The  cap'n  was  right,"  declared  Mahan.  "They 
wanted  to  throw  a  little  lesson  into  those  boche  snipers 
and  make  them  ease  up  on  their  heckling.  And  you 
gave  them  a  man's-size  dose  of  their  own  physic. 
There's  not  one  sniper  out  there  to-day,  to  ten  who 
were  on  deck  three  days  ago.  You've  done  your  job. 
And  you've  done  it  good  and  plenty.  But  it's  done — 
for  a  while  anyhow.  You  weren't  brought  over  here 
to  spend  your  time  in  prowling  around  No  Man's  Land 
on  a  still  hunt  for  stray  Germans.  That  isn't  Uncle 
Sam's  way.  Don't  go  grouching  over  it,  man!  You'll 


68  THE  WILDCAT 

be  remembered,  all  right.  And  if  they  get  pesky  again 
you'll  be  the  first  one  sent  out  to  abate  them.  You 
can  count  on  it.  Till  then,  go  ahead  with  your  regular 
work  and  forget  the  sniper  job." 

"But,  Sarge!"  pleaded  Cash,  "you  don't  git  the  idee. 
You  don't  git  it  at  all.  Those  Germans  will  be  shyer'n 
scat,  now  that  I've  flushed  'em.  An'  the  longer  the 
news  has  a  chance  to  git  round  among  'em,  the  shyer 
they're  due  to  git.  Why,  even  if  I  was  to  go  out  thar 
straight  off  it  ain't  likely  I'd  be  able  to  pot  one  where  I 
potted  three  before.  It's  the  same  difference  as  it  is 
between  the  first  flushin'  of  a  wild-turkey  bunch  an* 
the  second.  An'  if  I've  got  to  wait  long  there'll  be  no 
downin'  any  of  'em.  Tell  that  to  the  Cap.  Make  him 
see  if  he  wants  them  cusses  he  better  let  me  git  'em 
while  they're  still  gittable." 

In  vain  did  Top  Sergeant  Mahan  go  over  and  over 
the  same  ground,  trying  to  make  Cash  see  that  the 
company  captain  and  those  above  him  were  not  out 
for  a  record  in  the  matter  of  ambushed  Germans. 

Wyble  had  struck  one  idea  he  could  understand,  and 
he  would  not  give  it  up. 

"But,  Sarge,"  he  urged  desperately,  "I'm  no  durn 
good  here  foolin'  around  with  drill  an'  relief  an'  diggin' 
an'  all  that.  Any  mudback  can  do  them  things  if  you 
folks  is  sot  on  havin'  'em  done.  But  there  ain't  another 
man  in  all  this  outfit  who  can  shoot  like  I  can;  or  has 
the  knack  of  'layin'  out';  or  of  stalkin'.  Pop  got  the 
trick  of  it  from  gran'ther.  An'  gran'ther  got  if  off  th' 
Injuns  in  th'  old  days.  If  you  folks  is  out  to  git  Ger- 
mans I'm  the  feller  to  git  'em  fer  you.  Nice  big  ones. 


THE  WILDCAT  69 

If  you're  here  jes*  to  play  sojer,  any  poor  fool  c'n  play 
it  fer  you  as  good  as  me." 

"I've  just  told  you,"  began  the  sergeant,  "that  we 


"'Nuther  thing!"  suggested  Cash  brightly.  "These 
Germans  must  have  villages  somewe'res.  All  folks  do. 
Even  Injuns.  Some  place  where  they  live  when  they 
ain't  on  the  warpath.  Get  leave  an'  rations  an'  ca'- 
tridges  for  me — for  a  week,  or  maybe  two — an'  I'll 
gar'ntee  to  scout  till  I  find  one  of  them  villages.  The 
Dutchies  won't  be  expectin'  me.  An'  I  c'n  likely  pot 
a  whole  mess  of  'em  before  they  c'n  git  to  cover. 

"Say!"  he  went  on  eagerly,  a  bit  of  general  in- 
formation flashing  into  his  memory.  "Did  you  know 
Germans  was  a  kind  of  Confed'  ?  The  fightin'  Germans, 
I  mean.  Well,  they  are.  The  hull  twelve  I  got  was 
dressed  in  gray  Confed'  uniform,  same  as  pop  used  to 
wear.  I  got  his  old  uniform  to  home.  Lord,  but  pop 
would  sure  lay  into  me  if  he  knowed  I  was  pepperin' 
his  old  side  partners  like  that!  I'd  figered  that  all 
Germans  was  dressed  like  the  ones  back  home.  But 
they've  got  reg'lar  uniforms.  Confed'  uniforms,  at 
that.  I  wonder  does  our  gin'ral  know  about  it?" 

Again  the  long-suffering  Mahan  tried  to  set  him 
right;  this  time  as  to  the  wide  divergence  between  the 
gray-backed  troops  of  Ludendorff  and  the  Confeder- 
acy's gallant  soldiers.  But  Cash  merely  nodded  cryp- 
tically, as  always  he  did  when  he  thought  his  foreigner 
fellow  soldiers  were  trying  to  take  advantage  of  his 
supposed  ignorance.  And  he  swung  back  to  the  theme 
nearest  his  heart. 


7o  THE  WILDCAT 

"Now  about  that  snipin'  business,"  he  pursued, 
"even  if  the  Cap  don't  want  too  many  of  'em  shot  up, 
he  sure  won't  be  so  cantankerous  as  to  keep  me  from 
tryin'  to  git  that  thirteenth  feller!  I  mean  the  one 
that  kep'  blazin'  at  me  whiles  I  kep'  blazin'  at  him; 
an'  the  both  of  us  too  cute  to  show  an  inch  of  target  to 
t'other  or  stay  in  the  same  patch  of  cover  after  we'd 
fired.  That  Dutchy  sure  c'n  scout  grand!  He's  a  born 
woodsman.  An'  you-all  don't  want  it  to  be  said  the 
Germans  has  got  a  better  sniper  than  what  we've  got, 
do  you?  Well,  that's  jes'  what  will  be  said  by  everyone 
in  this  yer  county  unless  you  let  me  down  him.  Come 
on,  Sarge!  Let  me  go  back  arter  him!  I  been  thinkin' 
up  a  trick  gran'ther  got  off'n  th'  Injuns.  It  oughter 
land  him  sure.  Let  me  go  try!  I  b'lieve  that  feller 
can't  weigh  an  ounce  less'n  two-twenty.  Leave  me 
have  one  more  go  arter  him;  and  I'll  bring  him  in  to 
prove  it!" 

Top  Sergeant  Mahan's  patience  stopped  fraying,  and 
ripped  from  end  to  end. 

"You  seem  to  think  this  war  is  a  cross  between  a 
mountain  feud  and  a  deer  hunt!"  he  growled.  "Isn't 
there  any  way  of  hammering  through  your  ivory  mine 
that  we  aren't  here  to  pick  off"  unsuspecting  Germans 
and  make  a  tally  of  the  kill?  And  we  aren't  here  to 
brag  about  the  size  of  the  men  we  shoot  either.  We're 
here,  you  and  I,  to  obey  orders  and  do  our  work.  You'll 
get  plenty  of  shooting  before  you  go  home  again,  don't 
worry.  Only  you'll  do  it  the  way  you're  told  to.  After 
all  the  time  you've  spent  in  the  hoosgow  since  you 
joined,  I  should  think  you'd  know  that." 


THE  WILDCAT  71 

But  Cash  Wyble  did  not  know  it.  He  said  so — 
loudly,  offensively,  blasphemously.  He  said  many 
things — things  that  in  any  other  army  than  his  own 
would  have  landed  him  against  a  blank  wall  facing  a 
firing  squad.  Then  he  slouched  off  by  himself  to 
grumble. 

As  far  as  Cash  Wyble  was  concerned  the  war  was  a 
failure — a  total  failure.  The  one  bright  spot  in  its 
workaday  monotony  was  blurred  for  him  by  the  orders 
of  his  stupid  superiors.  In  his  vivid  imagination  that 
elusive  German  sniper  gradually  attained  a  weight  not 
far  from  three  hundred  pounds. 

In  sour  silence  Cash  sulked  through  the  rest  of  the 
day's  routine.  In  his  heart  boiled  black  rebellion.  He 
had  learned  his  soldier  trade,  back  at  Camp  Lee,  be- 
cause it  had  been  very  strongly  impressed  upon  him 
that  he  would  go  to  jail  if  he  did  not.  For  the  same 
reason  he  had  not  tried  to  desert.  He  had  all  the  true 
mountaineer  horror  for  prison.  He  had  toned  down 
his  native  temper  and  stubbornness  because  failure  to 
do  so  always  landed  him  in  the  guardhouse — a  place 
that,  to  his  mind,  was  almost  as  terrible  as  jail. 

But  out  here  in  the  wilderness  there  were  no  jails. 
At  least  Cash  had  seen  none.  And  he  had  it  on  the 
authority  of  Top  Sergeant  Mahan  himself  that  this 
part  of  France  was  not  within  the  legal  jurisdiction  of 
West  Virginia — the  only  region,  as  far  as  Cash  actually 
knew,  where  men  are  put  in  prison  for  their  misdeeds. 
Hence  the  rules  governing  Camp  Lee  could  not  be 
supposed  to  obtain  out  here.  All  of  which  comforted 
Cash  not  a  little. 


72  THE  WILDCAT 

To  him  "patriotism"  was  a  word  as  meaningless  as 
was  "discipline."  The  law  of  force  he  recognized — the 
law  that  had  hog-tied  him  and  flung  him  into  the  Army. 
But  the  higher  law  which  makes  men  risk  their  all, 
right  blithely,  that  their  country  and  civilization  may 
triumph — this  was  as  much  a  mystery  to  Cash  Wyble 
as  to  any  army  mule. 

Just  now  he  detested  the  country  that  had  dragged 
him  away  from  his  lean  shack  and  forbade  him  to  dis- 
port himself  as  he  chose  in  No  Man's  Land.  He  hated 
his  country;  he  hated  his  Army;  he  hated  his  regiment. 
Most  of  all  he  loathed  his  captain  and  Top  Sergeant 
Mahan. 

At  Camp  Lee  he  had  learned  to  comport  himself 
more  or  less  like  a  civilized  recruit  because  there  was 
no  breach  of  discipline  worth  the  penalty  of  the  guard- 
house. Out  here  it  was  different. 

That  night  Private  Cassius  Wyble  got  hold  of  two 
other  men's  emergency  rations,  a  bountiful  supply  of 
water  and  a  stuffing  pocketful  of  cartridges.  With 
these  and  his  adored  rifle  he  eluded  the  sentries — a 
ridiculously  easy  feat  for  so  skilled  a  woodsman — and 
went  over  the  top  and  on  into  No  Man's  Land. 

By  daylight  he  had  trailed  and  potted  a  German 
sniper. 

By  sunrise  he  had  located  the  man  against  whom  he 
had  sworn  his  strategy  feud — the  German  who  had  put 
him  on  his  mettle  two  days  before. 

Cash  did  not  see  his  foe.  And  when  from  the  edge 
of  a  rock  he  fired  at  a  puff  of  smoke  in  a  clump  of  trees 
no  resultant  body  came  tumbling  earthward.  And 


THE  WILDCAT  73 

thirty  seconds  later  a  bullet  from  quite  another  part 
of  the  clump  spatted  hotly  against  the  rock  edge  five 
inches  from  his  head. 

Cash  smiled  beatifically.  He  recognized  the  tactics  df 
his  former  opponent.  And  once  more  the  merry  game 
was  on. 

To  make  perfectly  certain  of  his  rival's  identity  Cash 
wiggled  low  in  the  undergrowth  until  he  came  to  a  jut 
of  rock  about  seven  feet  long  and  two  feet  high.  Lying 
at  full  length  behind  this  low  barrier,  and  parallel  to 
it,  Cash  put  his  hat  on  the  toe  of  his  boot  and  cautiously 
lifted  his  foot  until  the  hat's  sugar-loaf  crown  protruded 
a  few  inches  above  the  top  of  the  rock. 

On  the  instant,  from  the  tree  clump,  snapped  the 
report  of  a  rifle.  The  bullet,  ignoring  the  hat,  nicked 
the  rock  comb  precisely  above  Cash's  upturned  face. 
He  nodded  approval,  for  it  told  him  that  his  enemy 
was  not  only  a  good  forest  fighter  but  that  he  recognized 
the  same  skill  in  Wyble. 

Thus  began  two  days  of  delightful  pastime  for  the 
exiled  mountaineer.  Thus,  too,  began  a  series  of  offen- 
sive and  defensive  maneuvers  worthy  of  Natty  Bumppo 
and  Old  Sleuth  combined. 

It  was  not  until  Cash  abandoned  the  hunt  long  enough 
to  find  and  shoot  another  German  sniper  and  appro- 
priate the  latter's  uniform  that  he  was  able,  under 
cover  of  dusk,  to  get  near  enough  to  the  tree  clump  for 
a  fair  sight  of  his  antagonist.  At  which  juncture  a 
snap  shot  from  the  hip  ended  the  duel. 

Cash's  initial  thrill  of  triumph,  even  then,  was  damp- 
ened. For  the  sniper — to  whom  by  this  time  he  had 


74  THE  WILDCAT 

credited  the  size  of  Goliath  at  the  very  least — proved 
to  be  a  wizened  little  fellow,  not  much  more  than  five 
feet  tall. 

Still  Cash  had  won.  He  had  outgeneraled  a  mighty 
clever  sharpshooter.  He  had  gotten  what  he  came  out 
for,  and  two  other  snipers,  besides.  It  was  not  a  bad 
bag.  As  there  was  nothing  else  to  stay  there  for,  and 
as  his  water  was  gone,  as  well  as  nearly  all  his  car- 
tridges, Cash  shouldered  his  rifle  and  plodded  wearily 
back  to  camp  for  a  night's  rest. 

There  to  his  amazed  indignation  he  was  not  received 
as  a  hero,  even  when  he  sought  to  recount  his  successful 
adventures.  Instead,  he  was  arrested  at  once  on  a 
charge  of  technical  desertion,  and  was  lodged  in  the 
local  substitute  for  a  regular  guardhouse. 

Bewildered  wrath  smothered  him.  What  had  he  done, 
to  be  arrested  again?  True,  he  had  left  camp  without 
leave.  But  had  he  not  atoned  for  this  peccadillo  fifty- 
fold  by  the  results  of  his  absence?  Had  he  not  killed 
three  men  whose  business  it  was  to  shoot  Americans? 
Had  he  not  killed  the  very  best  sniper  the  Germans 
could  hope  to  possess  ? 

Yet,  they  had  not  promoted  him.  They  had  not  so 
much  as  thanked  him.  Instead,  they  had  stuck  him 
here  in  the  hoosgow.  And  Mahan  had  said  something 
about  a  court-martial. 

It  was  black  ingratitude!  That  was  what  it  was. 
That  and  more.  Such  people  did  not  deserve  to  have 
the  services  of  a  real  fighter  like  himself. 

Which  started  another  train  of  thought. 

Apparently — except  on  special  occasions — the  Amer- 


THE  WILDCAT  75 

icans  did  not  send  men  out  into  the  wilderness  to  take 
pot  shots  at  the  lurking  foe.  And  apparently  that  was 
just  what  the  Germans  always  did.  He  had  full  proof, 
indeed,  of  the  German  custom.  For  had  he  not  found 
a  number  of  the  graybacks  thus  happily  engaged  ?  Not 
for  one  occasion  only,  but  as  a  regular  thing  ? 

Yes,  the  Germans  had  sense  enough  to  appreciate  a 
good  fighter  when  they  had  one.  And  they  knew  how 
to  make  use  of  him  in  a  way  to  afford  innocent  pleasure 
to  himself  and  much  harm  to  the  enemy.  That  was 
the  ideal  life  for  a  soldier — "laying  out"  and  sniping 
the  foe.  Not  kitchen-police  work  and  endless  drill  and 
digging  holes  and  taking  baths.  Sniping  was  the  job 
for  a  he-man,  if  one  had  to  be  away  from  home  at  all. 
And  in  the  German  ranks  alone  was  such  happy  em- 
ployment to  be  found. 

When  Cash  calmly  and  definitely  made  up  his  mind 
to  desert  to  the  Germans  he  was  troubled  by  no  scruples 
at  all.  Even  the  dread  of  the  mysterious  court-martial 
added  little  weight  to  his  decision.  The  deed  seemed 
to  him  not  a  whit  worse  than  was  the  leaving  of  one 
farmer's  employ,  back  home,  to  take  service  with  an- 
other who  offered  more  congenial  work. 

Wherefore  he  deserted. 

It  was  not  at  all  difficult  for  him  to  escape  from  the 
elementary  cell  in  which  he  was  confined.  It  was  a 
mere  matter  of  strategy  and  luck.  So  was  his  escape 
to  No  Man's  Land. 

Unteroffizier  Otto  Schrabstaetter  an  hour  later  con- 
ducted to  his  company  commander  a  lanky  and  leather- 
faced  man  in  khaki  uniform  who  had  accosted  a  sentry 


76  THE  WILDCAT 

with  the  pacific  plea  that  he  be  sworn  in  as  a  member  of 
the  German  Army. 

The  sentry  did  not  know  English;  nor  did  Unter- 
offizier  Otto  Schrabstaetter.  And  though  Cash  ad- 
dressed them  both  in  a  very  fair  imitation  of  the  gut- 
tural English  he  had  heard  used  by  the  West  Virginia 
Germans — and  which  he  fondly  believed  to  be  pure 
German — they  did  not  understand  a  word  of  his  plea. 
So  he  was  taken  to  the  captain,  a  man  who  had  lived 
for  five  years  in  New  York. 

With  the  Unteroffizier  at  his  side  and  with  two  armed 
soldiers  just  behind  him  Cash  confronted  the  captain, 
and  under  the  latter's  volley  of  barked  questions  told 
his  story.  Ten  minutes  afterward  he  was  repeating 
the  same  tale  to  a  flint-faced  man  with  a  fox-brush 
mustache — Colonel  von  Scheurer,  commander  of  the 
regiment  that  held  that  section  of  the  first-line  trench. 

A  little  to  Cash's  aggrieved  surprise,  neither  the 
captain  nor  the  colonel  seemed  interested  in  his  prowess 
as  a  sharpshooter  or  in  his  ill-treatment  at  the  hands 
of  his  own  Army.  Instead,  they  asked  an  interminable 
series  of  questions  that  seemed  to  have  no  bearing  at 
all  on  his  case. 

They  wanted,  for  instance,  to  know  the  name  of  his 
regiment;  its  quota  of  men;  how  long  they  had  been 
in  France;  what  sea  route  they  had  taken  in  crossing 
the  ocean;  from  what  port  they  had  sailed;  and  the 
approximate  size  of  the  convoy.  They  wanted  to 
know  what  regiments  lay  to  either  side  of  Cash's  in 
the  American  trenches;  how  many  men  per  month 
America  was  sending  overseas  and  where  they  usually 


THE  WILDCAT  77 

landed.     They  wanted  to  know  a  thousand  things 
more,  of  the  same  general  nature. 

Cash  saw  no  reason  why  he  should  not  satisfy  their 
silly  curiosity.  And  he  proceeded  to  do  so  to  the  best 
of  his  ability.  But  as  he  did  not  know  so  much  as  the 
name  of  the  port  whence  he  had  shipped  to  France, 
and  as  the  rest  of  his  tactical  knowledge  was  on  the 
same  plane,  the  fast-barked  queries  presently  took 
on  a  tone  of  exasperation. 

This  did  not  bother  Cash.  He  was  doing  his  best. 
If  these  people  did  not  like  his  answers  that  was  no 
affair  of  his.  He  was  here  to  fight,  not  to  talk.  His 
attention  wandered. 

Presently  he  interrupted  the  colonel's  most  searching 
questions  to  ask:  "You-all  don't  happen  to  be  the 
Kaiser,  do  you?  I  s'pose  not  though.  I'll  bet  that 
old  Kaiser  must  weigh " 

A  thundered  oath  brought  him  back  to  the  subject 
in  hand,  and  the  cross-questioning  went  on.  But  all 
the  queries  elicited  nothing  more  than  a  mass  of  mis- 
information, delivered  with  such  palpable  genuineness 
of  purpose  that  even  Colonel  von  Scheurer  could  not 
doubt  the  man's  good  faith. 

And  at  last  the  two  officers  began  to  have  a  very 
fair  estimate  of  the  mountaineer's  character  and  of 
the  reasons  that  had  brought  him  thither. 

Still  it  was  the  colonel's  mission  in  life  to  suspect — 
to  take  nothing  for  granted.  And  after  all,  this  yokel 
and  his  queer  story  were  no  more  bizarre  than  was 
many  a  spy  trick  played  by  Germany  upon  her  foes. 
Spies  were  bound  to  be  good  actors.  And  this  lantern- 


78  THE  WILDCAT 

jawed  fellow  might  possibly  be  a  character  actor  of 
high  ability.  Colonel  von  Scheurer  sat  for  a  moment 
in  silence,  peering  up  at  Cash  from  beneath  a  thatch 
of  stiff-haired  brows.  Then  he  ordered  the  captain 
and  the  others  to  leave  the  dugout. 

Alone  with  Wyble  the  colonel  still  maintained  his 
pose  of  majestic  surveillance. 

Then  with  no  warning  he  spat  forth  the  question: 
"Werbistdu?" 

Not  the  best  character  actor  unhung  could  have 
simulated  the  owlish  ignorance  in  Cash's  face.  Not 
the  shrewdest  spy  could  have  had  time  to  mask 
a  knowledge  of  German.  And,  as  Colonel  von 
Scheurer  well  knew,  no  spy  who  did  not  understand 
German  would  have  been  sent  to  enlist  in  the  German 
Army. 

The  colonel  at  once  was  satisfied  that  the  newcomer 
was  not  a  spy.  Yet  to  make  doubly  certain  of  the 
recruit's  willingness  to  serve  against  his  own  country 
Von  Scheurer  sought  another  test.  Pulling  toward 
him  a  scratch  pad  he  picked  up  a  pencil  from  the  table 
before  him  and  proceeded  to  make  a  rapid  sketch. 
When  the  sketch  was  complete  he  detached  the  top 
sheet  and  showed  it  to  Cash.  On  it  was  drawn  a  rough 
likeness  of  the  American  flag. 

"What  is  that?"  he  demanded. 

"Old  Glory,"  answered  Cash  after  a  leisurely  survey 
of  the  picture;  adding  in  friendly  patronage:  "And 
not  bad  drawed,  at  that." 

"It  is  the  United  States  flag,"  pursued  the  colonel, 
"as  you  say.  It  is  the  national  emblem  of  the  country 


THE  WILDCAT  79 

where  you  were  born;  the  country  you  are  renouncing, 
to  become  a  subject  of  the  All  Highest." 

"Meanin'  Gawd?"  asked  Cash. 

He  wanted  to  be  sure  of  every  step.  While  he  did 
not  at  all  know  the  meaning  of  "renounce,"  yet  his 
attendance  at  mountain  camp-meeting  revivals  had 
given  him  a  possible  inkling  as  to  what  "All  Highest" 
meant. 

"What?"  inquired  the  puzzled  colonel,  not  catching 
his  drift. 

"The  'All  Highest'  is  Gawd,  ain't  it?"  said  Cash. 

"It  is  His  Imperial  Majesty,  the  Kaiser,"  sharply 
retorted  the  scandalized  colonel. 

"Oh!"  exclaimed  Cash,  much  interested.  "I  see. 
In  Wes'  V'ginny  we  call  Him  'Gawd.'  An'  over  in 
this  neck  of  the  woods  your  Dutch  name  for  Him  is 
'Kaiser.'  What  a  ninny  I  am!  I'd  allers  had  the  idee 
the  Kaiser  was  jes'  a  man,  with  somethin'  the  same 
sort  of  job  as  Pres'dent  Wilson's.  But " 

"This  picture  represents  the  flag  of  the  United 
States,"  resumed  the  impatient  Von  Scheurer,  waiving 
the  subject  of  theology  for  the  point  in  hand.  "You 
have  renounced  it.  You  have  declared  your  wish  to 
fight  against  it.  Prove  that.  Prove  it  by  tearing 
that  sketch  in  two — and  spitting  upon  it!" 

"Hold  on!"  interposed  Cash,  speaking  with  tolerant 
kindness  as  to  a  somewhat  stupid  child.  "Hold  on, 
Cap!  You  got  me  wrong.  Or  may  be  I  didn't  make  it 
so  very  clear.  I  didn't  ever  say  I  wanted  to  fight  Old 
Glory.  All  I  said  I  wanted  to  do  was  to  fight  that 
crowd  of  smart  Alecks  over  yonder  who  jail  me  all  the 


80  THE  WILDCAT 

time  an*  won't  let  me  fight  in  my  own  way.  I've  got 
nothin'  agin  th'  old  flag.  Why,  that  'ere's  the  flag  I 
was  homed  under!  Me  an'  pop  an'  gran'ther  an*  the 
hull  b'ilin'  of  us — as  fur  back  as  there  was  any  'Merica, 
I  reckon.  I  don't  go  'round  wavin'  it  none.  That  ain't 
my  way.  But  I  sure  ain't  goin'  to  tear  it  up.  And  I 
most  gawdamightysure  ain't  goin'  to  spit  on  it.  I " 

He  checked  himself.  Not  that  he  had  no  more  to 
say,  but  because  to  his  astonishment  he  found  he  was 
beginning  to  lose  his  temper.  This  phenomenon  halted 
his  speech  and  turned  his  wondering  thoughts  inward. 

Cash  could  not  understand  his  own  strange  surge 
of  choler.  He  had  not  been  aware  of  any  special 
interest  in  the  American  flag.  A  little  bunting  repre- 
sentation of  the  Stars  and  Stripes — now  faded  close 
to  whiteness — hung  on  the  wall  of  his  shack  at  home, 
where  his  grandmother,  a  rabid  Unionist,  had  hung  it 
nearly  sixty  years  earlier,  when  West  Virginia  had 
refused  to  join  the  Confederacy.  Every  day  of  his  life 
Cash  had  seen  it  there;  had  seen  without  noting  or 
caring. 

Camp  Lee,  too,  had  been  ablaze  with  American  flags. 
And  after  he  had  learned  the  rules  as  to  the  flag  salute 
Cash  had  never  given  the  banners  a  second  thought. 
The  regimental  flags,  too,  here  in  France,  had  seemed 
to  him  but  a  natural  part  of  the  Army's  equipment, 
and  no  more  to  be  venerated  than  the  twin  bars  on  his 
captain's  tunic. 

Thus  he  could  not  in  the  very  least  account  for  the 
fiery  flare  of  rebellion  that  gripped  him  at  this  ramrod- 
like  Prussian's  command  to  defile  the  emblem.  Yet 


THE  WILDCAT  81 

grip  him  it  did.  And  it  held  him  there,  quivering  and 
purple,  the  strange  emotion  waxing  more  and  more 
overpoweringly  potent  at  each  passing  fraction  of  a 
second.  Dumb  and  shaking  he  glowered  down  at  the 
amused  colonel. 

Von  Scheurer  watched  him  placidly  for  a  few  mo- 
ments; then  with  a  short  laugh  he  advanced  the  test. 
Reaching  for  the  sheet  of  paper  whereon  he  had  sketched 
the  flag  the  colonel  held  it  lightly  between  the  fingers 
of  his  outstretched  hands. 

"It  is  really  a  very  simple  thing  to  do,"  he  said 
carelessly,  yet  keeping  a  covert  watch  upon  the  moun- 
taineer. "And  it  is  a  thing  that  every  loyal  German 
subject  should  rejoice  to  do.  All  I  required  was  that 
you  first  tear  the  emblem  in  two  and  then  spit  upon 
it — as  I  do  now." 

But  the  colonel  did  not  suit  action  to  words.  As 
his  fingers  tightened  on  the  sheet  of  paper  the  dugout 
echoed  to  a  low  snarl  that  would  have  done  credit  to  a 
Cumberland  catamount. 

And  with  the  snarl  six  feet  of  lean  and  wiry  bulk 
shot  through  the  air  across  the  narrow  table  that  sep- 
arated Cash  from  the  colonel. 

Von  Scheurer  with  admirable  presence  of  mind 
snatched  his  pistol  from  its  temporary  resting  place 
in  his  lap.  With  the  speed  of  the  wind  he  seized  the 
weapon.  But  with  the  speed  of  the  whirlwind  Cash 
Wyble  was  upon  him,  his  clawlike  fingers  deep  in  the 
colonel's  full  throat,  his  hundred  and  sixty  pounds  of 
bone  and  gristle  smiting  Von  Scheurer  on  chest  and 
shoulder. 


82  THE  WILDCAT 

Cash  had  literally  risen  in  air  and  pounced  on  the 
Prussian.  Under  the  impact  Von  Scheurer's  chair 
collapsed.  Both  men  shot  to  earth,  the  colonel  under- 
most and  the  pistol  flying  unheeded  from  his  grasp. 
Over,  too,  went  the  table,  and  the  electric  light  upon 
it.  And  the  dugout  was  in  pitch  blackness. 

There  in  the  dark  Cash  Wyble  deliriously  tackled 
his  prey,  making  queer  and  hideous  little  worrying 
sounds  now  and  then  far  down  in  his  throat,  like  a  dog 
that  mangles  its  meat. 

And  there  the  sentry  from  the  earthen  passageway 
found  them  when  he  rushed  in  with  an  electric  torch, 
and  followed  by  a  rabble  of  fellow  soldiers. 

Cash  at  sound  of  the  running  footsteps  jumped  to 
his  feet.  The  man  he  had  attacked  was  lying  very 
still,  in  a  crumpled  and  yet  sprawling  heap — in  a 
posture  never  designed  by  Nature. 

With  one  wild  sweep  of  his  windmill  arms  Cash 
grabbed  up  the  sheet  of  paper  on  which  Von  Scheurer 
had  made  his  life's  last  sketch.  With  a  simultaneous 
sweep  he  knocked  the  glass-bulbed  torch  from  the 
sentinel,  just  as  a  rifle  or  two  were  centering  their 
aim  toward  him;  and,  head  down,  he  tore  into  the 
group  of  men  who  blocked  the  dugout  entrance. 

Cash  had  a  faintly  conscious  sense  of  dashing  down 
one  passageway  and  up  another,  following  by  forestry 
instinct  the  course  he  noted  when  he  was  led  into  the 
colonel's  presence. 

He  collided  with  a  sentinel;  he  butted  another  from 
his  flying  path.  He  heard  yells  and  shots — especially 
shots.  Once  something  hit  him  on  the  shoulder,  whirl- 


THE  WILDCAT  83 

ing  him  half  round  without  breaking  his  stride.  Again 
something  hot  whipped  him  across  the  cheek.  And  at 
last  he  was  out,  under  the  foggy  stars,  with  excited 
Germans  firing  in  his  general  direction  and  loosing 
off  star  shells. 

Again  instinct  and  scout  skill  came  to  the  rescue 
as  he  plunged  into  a  bramble  thicket  and  wriggled 
through  long  grass  on  his  heaving  stomach. 

An  hour  before  dawn  Cash  Wyble  was  led  before  his 
sleepy  and  unloving  company  commander.  The  re- 
turned wanderer  was  caked  with  dirt  and  blood.  His 

face  was  scored  by  briers.    Across  one  cheek  ran  the 

i 

red  wale  of  a  bullet.  A  very  creditable  flesh  wound 
adorned  his  left  shoulder.  His  clothes  were  in  ribbons. 

Before  the  captain  could  frame  the  first  of  a  thousand 
scathing  words  Cash  broke  out  pantingly:  "Stick  me 
in  the  hoosgow  if  you're  a  mind  to,  Cap!  Stick  me 
there  for  life.  Or  wish  me  onto  a  kitchen-police  job 
forever!  I'm  not  kickin'.  It's  comin'  to  me,  all  right, 
arter  what  I  done. 

"I  git  the  drift  of  the  hull  thing  now.  I'm  onter 
what  it  means.  It — it  means  Old  Glory!  It  means — 
this!" 

He  stuck  out  one  muddy  hand  wherein  was  clutched 
a  wad  of  scratch-pad  paper. 

Then  the  company  commander  did  a  thing  that 
stamped  him  as  a  genius.  Instead  of  administering 
the  planned  rebuke  and  following  it  by  sending  the 
wretch  to  the  guard  house  he  began  to  ask  questions. 

"What  do  you  make  of  it  all?"  dazedly  queried  the 
captain  of  Top  Sergeant  Mahan  when  Cash  had  been 


84  THE  WILDCAT 

taken  to  the  trench   hospital  to   have   his   shoulder 
dressed. 

"Well,  sir,"  reported  Mahan  meditatively,  "for 
one  thing,  I  take  it,  we've  got  a  new  soldier  in  the 
company.  A  soldier,  not  a  varmint.  For  another 
thing,  I  take  it,  Uncle  Sam's  got  a  new  American  on 
his  list  of  nephews.  And — and,  unless  I'm  wrong, 
Kaiser  Bill  is  short  one  crackajack  sniper  and  one 
perfectly  good  Prussian  colonel  too.  War's  a  funny 
thing,  sir." 

— ALBERT  PAYSON  TERHUNE. 


IV 
THE  CITIZEN 

THE  President  of  the  United  States  was  speaking. 
His  audience  comprised  two  thousand  foreign-born 
men  who  had  just  been  admitted  to  citizenship.  They 
listened  intently,  their  faces,  aglow  with  the  light  of  a 
new-born  patriotism,  upturned  to  the  calm,  intellec- 
tual face  of  the  first  citizen  of  the  country  they  now 
claimed  as  their  own. 

Here  and  there  among  the  newly  made  citizens 
were  wives  and  children.  The  women  were  proud  of 
their  men.  They  looked  at  them  from  time  to  time, 
their  faces  showing  pride  and  awe. 

One  little  woman,  sitting  immediately  in  front  of 
the  President,  held  the  hand  of  a  big,  muscular  man 
and  stroked  it  softly.  The  big  man  was  looking  at  the 
speaker  with  great  blue  eyes  that  were  the  eyes  of  a 
dreamer. 

The  President's  words  came  clear  and  distinct: 

You  were  drawn  across  the  ocean  by  some  beckoning 
finger  of  hope,  by  some  belief,  by  some  vision  of  a  new 
kind  of  justice,  by  some  expectation  of  a  better  kind  of 
life.  You  dreamed  dreams  of  this  country,  and  I  hope 
you  brought  the  dreams  with  you,  A  man  enriches  the 
country  to  which  he  brings  dreams,  and  you  who  have 
brought  them  have  enriched  America. 

85 


86  THE  CITIZEN 

The  big  man  made  a  curious  choking  noise  and  his 
wife  breathed  a  soft  "Hush!"  The  giant  was  strangely 
affected. 

The  President  continued: 

No  doubt  you  have  been  disappointed  in  some  of  us, 
but  remember  this,  if  we  have  grown  at  all  poor  in  the 
ideal,  you  brought  some  of  it  with  you.  A  man  does  not 
go  out  to  seek  the  thing  that  is  not  in  him.  A  man  does 
not  hope  for  the  thing  that  he  does  not  believe  in,  and  if 
some  of  us  have  forgotten  what  America  believed  in,  you 
at  any  rate  imported  in  your  own  hearts  a  renewal  of  the 
belief.  Each  of  you,  I  am  sure,  brought  a  dream,  a 
glorious,  shining  dream,  a  dream  worth  more  than  gold 
or  silver,  and  that  is  the  reason  that  I,  for  one,  make  you 
welcome. 

The  big  man's  eyes  were  fixed.  His  wife  shook  him 
gently,  but  he  did  not  heed  her.  He  was  looking 
through  the  presidential  rostrum,  through  the  big 
buildings  behind  it,  looking  out  over  leagues  of  space 
to  a  snow-swept  village  that  huddled  on  an  island  in 
the  Beresina,  the  swift-flowing  tributary  of  the  mighty 
Dnieper,  an  island  that  looked  like  a  black  bone  stuck 
tight  in  the  maw  of  the  stream. 

It  was  in  the  little  village  on  the  Beresina  that  the 
Dream  came  to  Ivan  Berloff,  Big  Ivan  of  the  Bridge. 

The  Dream  came  in  the  spring.  All  great  dreams 
come  in  the  spring,  and  the  Spring  Maiden  who  brought 
Big  Ivan's  Dream  was  more  than  ordinarily  beautiful. 
She  swept  up  the  Beresina,  trailing  wondrous  dra- 
peries of  vivid  green.  Her  feet  touched  the  snow- 
hardened  ground  and  armies  of  little  white  and  blue 


THE  CITIZEN  87 

flowers  sprang  up  in  her  footsteps.  Soft  breezes  es- 
corted her,  velvety  breezes  that  carried  the  aromas  of 
the  far-off  places  from  which  they  came,  places  far  to 
the  southward,  and  more  distant  towns  beyond  the 
Black  Sea  whose  people  were  not  under  the  sway  of 
the  Great  Czar. 

The  father  of  Big  Ivan,  who  had  fought  under 
Prince  Menshikov  at  Alma  fifty-five  years  before, 
hobbled  out  to  see  the  sunbeams  eat  up  the  snow 
hummocks  that  hid  in  the  shady  places,  and  he  told 
his  son  it  was  the  most  wonderful  spring  he  had  ever 
seen. 

"The  little  breezes  are  hot  and  sweet,"  he  said, 
sniffing  hungrily  with  his  face  turned  toward  the 
south.  "I  know  them,  Ivan!  I  know  them!  They 
have  the  spice  odor  that  I  sniffed  on  the  winds  that 
came  to  us  when  we  lay  in  the  trenches  at  Balaklava. 
Praise  God  for  the  warmth!" 

And  that  day  the  Dream  came  to  Big  Ivan  as  he 
plowed.  It  was  a  wonder  dream.  It  sprang  into  his 
brain  as  he  walked  behind  the  plow,  and  for  a  few 
minutes  he  quivered  as  the  big  bridge  quivers  when 
the  Beresina  sends  her  ice  squadrons  to  hammer  the 
arches.  It  made  his  heart  pound  mightily,  and  his 
lips  and  throat  became  very  dry. 

Big  Ivan  stopped  at  the  end  of  the  furrow  and  tried 
to  discover  what  had  brought  the  Dream.  Where  had 
it  come  from?  Why  had  it  clutched  him  so  suddenly? 
Was  he  the  only  man  in  the  village  to  whom  it  had 
come? 

Like  his  father,  he  sniffed  the  sweet-smelling  breezes. 


88  THE  CITIZEN 

He  thrust  his  great  hands  into  the  sunbeams.  He 
reached  down  and  plucked  one  of  a  bunch  of  white 
flowers  that  had  sprung  up  overnight.  The  Dream 
was  born  of  the  breezes  and  the  sunshine  and  the 
spring  flowers.  It  came  from  them  and  it  had  sprung 
into  his  mind  because  he  was  young  and  strong.  He 
knew!  It  couldn't  come  to  his  father  or  Donkov,  the 
tailor,  or  Poborino,  the  smith.  They  were  old  and 
weak,  and  Ivan's  dream  was  one  that  called  for  youth 
and  strength. 

"Ay,  for  youth  and  strength,"  he  muttered  as  he 
gripped  the  plow.  "And  I  have  it!" 

That  evening  Big  Ivan  of  the  Bridge  spoke  to  his 
wife,  Anna,  a  little  woman,  who  had  a  sweet  face  and 
a  wealth  of  fair  hair. 

"Wife,  we  are  going  away  from  here,"  he  said. 

"Where  are  we  going,  Ivan?"  she  asked. 

"Where  do  you  think,  Anna?"  he  said,  looking 
down  at  her  as  she  stood  by  his  side. 

"To  Bobruisk,"  she  murmured. 

"No." 

"Farther?" 

"Ay,  a  long  way  farther." 

Fear  sprang  into  her  soft  eyes.  Bobruisk  was  eighty- 
nine  versts  away,  yet  Ivan  said  they  were  going  farther. 

"We — we  are  not  going  to  Minsk?"  she  cried. 

"Ay,  and  beyond  Minsk!" 

"Ivan,  tell  me!"  she  gasped.  "Tell  me  where  we 
are  going!" 

"We  are  going  to  America." 

"To  America?" 


THE  CITIZEN  89 

"Yes,  to  America!" 

Big  Ivan  of  the  Bridge  lifted  up  his  voice  when  he 
cried  out  the  words  "To  America,"  and  then  a  sudden 
fear  sprang  upon  him  as  those  words  dashed  through 
the  little  window  out  into  the  darkness  of  the  village 
street.  Was  he  mad?  America  was  8,000  versts 
away!  It  was  far  across  the  ocean,  a  place  that  was 
only  a  name  to  him,  a  place  where  he  knew  no  one. 
He  wondered  in  the  strange  little  silence  that  followed 
his  words  if  the  crippled  son  of  Poborino,  the  smith, 
had  heard  him.  The  cripple  would  jeer  at  him  if  the 
night  wind  had  carried  the  words  to  his  ear. 

Anna  remained  staring  at  her  big  husband  for  a  few 
minutes,  then  she  sat  down  quietly  at  his  side.  There 
was  a  strange  look  in  his  big  blue  eyes,  the  look  of  a 
man  to  whom  has  come  a  vision,  the  look  which  came 
into  the  eyes  of  those  shepherds  of  Judea  long,  long 
ago. 

"What  is  it,  Ivan?"  she  murmured  softly,  patting 
his  big  hand.  "Tell  me." 

And  Big  Ivan  of  the  Bridge,  slow  of  tongue,  told 
of  the  Dream.  To  no  one  else  would  he  have  told  it. 
Anna  understood.  She  had  a  way  of  patting  his  hands 
and  saying  soft  things  when  his  tongue  could  not  find 
words  to  express  his  thoughts. 

Ivan  told  how  the  Dream  had  come  to  him  as  he 
plowed.  He  told  her  how  it  had  sprung  upon  him,  a 
wonderful  dream  born  of  the  soft  breezes,  of  the  sun- 
shine, of  the  sweet  smell  of  the  upturned  sod  and  of 
his  own  strength.  "It  wouldn't  come  to  weak  men," 
he  said,  baring  an  arm  that  showed  great  snaky  mus- 


90  THE  CITIZEN 

cles  rippling  beneath  the  clear  skin.  "It  is  a  dream 
that  comes  only  to  those  who  are  strong  and  those  who 
want — who  want  something  that  they  haven't  got." 
Then  in  a  lower  voice  he  said:  "What  is  it  that  we 
want,  Anna?" 

The  little  wife  looked  out  into  the  darkness  with 
fear-filled  eyes.  There  were  spies  even  there  in  that 
little  village  on  the  Beresina,  and  it  was  dangerous  to 
say  words  that  might  be  construed  into  a  reflection  on 
the  Government.  But  she  answered  Ivan.  She 
stooped  and  whispered  one  word  into  his  ear,  and  he 
slapped  his  thigh  with  his  big  hand. 

"Ay,"  he  cried.  "That  is  what  we  want!  You  and 
I  and  millions  like  us  want  it,  and  over  there,  Anna, 
over  there  we  will  get  it.  It  is  the  country  where  a 
muzhik  is  as  good  as  a  prince  of  the  blood!" 

Anna  stood  up,  took  a  small  earthenware  jar  from 
a  side  shelf,  dusted  it  carefully  and  placed  it  upon  the 
mantel.  From  a  knotted  cloth  about  her  neck  she 
took  a  ruble  and  dropped  the  coin  into  the  jar.  Big 
Ivan  looked  at  her  curiously. 

"It  is  to  make  legs  for  your  Dream,"  she  explained. 
"It  is  many  versts  to  America,  and  one  rides  on  rubles." 

"You  are  a  good  wife,"  he  said.  "I  was  afraid  that 
you  might  laugh  at  me." 

"It  is  a  great  dream,"  she  murmured.  "Come,  we 
will  go  to  sleep." 

The  Dream  maddened  Ivan  during  the  days  that 
followed.  It  pounded  within  his  brain  as  he  followed 
the  plow.  It  bred  a  discontent  that  made  him  hate 
the  little  village,  the  swift-flowing  Beresina  and  the 


THE  CITIZEN  91 

gray  stretches  that  ran  toward  Mogilev.  He  wanted 
to  be  moving,  but  Anna  had  said  that  one  rode  on 
rubles,  and  rubles  were  hard  to  find. 

And  in  some  mysterious  way  the  village  became 
aware  of  the  secret.  Donkov,  the  tailor,  discovered 
it.  Donkov  lived  in  one-half  of  the  cottage  occupied 
by  Ivan  and  Anna,  and  Donkov  had  long  ears.  The 
tailor  spread  the  news,  and  Poborino,  the  smith,  and 
Yanansk,  the  baker,  would  jeer  at  Ivan  as  he  passed. 

"When  are  you  going  to  America?"  they  would  ask. 

"Soon,"  Ivan  would  answer. 

"Take  us  with  you!"  they  would  cry  in  chorus. 

"It  is  no  place  for  cowards,"  Ivan  would  answer. 
"It  is  a  long  way,  and  only  brave  men  can  make  the 
journey." 

"Are  you  brave?"  the  baker  screamed  one  day  as 
he  went  by. 

"I  am  brave  enough  to  want  liberty!"  cried  Ivan 
angrily.  "I  am  brave  enough  to  want " 

"Be  careful!  Be  careful!"  interrupted  the  smith. 
"A  long  tongue  has  given  many  a  man  a  train  journey 
that  he  never  expected." 

That  night  Ivan  and  Anna  counted  the  rubles  in  the 
earthenware  pot.  The  giant  looked  down  at  his  wife 
with  a  gloomy  face,  but  she  smiled  and  patted  his  hand. 

"It  is  slow  work,"  he  said. 

"We  must  be  patient,"  she  answered.  "You  have 
the  Dream." 

"Ay,"  he  said.    "I  have  the  Dream." 

Through  the  hot,  languorous  summertime  the 
Dream  grew  within  the  brain  of  Big  Ivan.  He  saw 


92  THE  CITIZEN 

visions  in  the  smoky  haze  that  hung  above  the  Ber- 
esina.  At  times  he  would  stand,  hoe  in  hand,  and 
look  toward  the  west,  the  wonderful  west  into  which 
the  sun  slipped  down  each  evening  like  a  coin  dropped 
from  the  fingers  of  the  dying  day. 

Autumn  came,  and  the  fretful  whining  winds  that 
came  down  from  the  north  chilled  the  Dream.  The 
winds  whispered  of  the  coming  of  the  Snow  King,  and 
the  river  grumbled  as  it  listened.  Big  Ivan  kept  out 
of  the  way  of  Poborino,  the  smith,  and  Yanansk,  the 
baker.  The  Dream  was  still  with  him,  but  autumn  is 
a  bad  time  for  dreams. 

Winter  came,  and  the  Dream  weakened.  It  was 
only  the  earthenware  pot  that  kept  it  alive,  the  pot 
into  which  the  industrious  Anna  put  every  coin  that 
could  be  spared.  Often  Big  Ivan  would  stare  at  the 
pot  as  he  sat  beside  the  stove.  The  pot  was  the  cord 
which  kept  the  Dream  alive. 

"You  are  a  good  woman,  Anna,"  Ivan  would  say 
again  and  again.  "It  was  you  who  thought  of  saving 
the  rubles/' 

"But  it  was  you  who  dreamed,"  she  would  answer. 
"Wait  for  the  spring,  husband  mine.  Wait." 

It  was  strange  how  the  spring  came  to  the  Beresina 
that  year.  It  sprang  upon  the  flanks  of  winter  before 
the  Ice  King  had  given  the  order  to  retreat  into  the 
fastnesses  of  the  north.  It  swept  up  the  river  escorted 
by  a  million  little  breezes,  and  housewives  opened 
their  windows  and  peered  out  with  surprise  upon  their 
faces.  A  wonderful  guest  had  come  to  them  and 
found  them  unprepared. 


THE  CITIZEN  93 

Big  Ivan  of  the  Bridge  was  fixing  a  fence  in  the 
meadow  on  the  morning  the  Spring  Maiden  reached 
the  village.  For  a  little  while  he  was  not  aware  of  her 
arrival.  His  mind  was  upon  his  work,  but  suddenly 
he  discovered  that  he  was  hot,  and  he  took  off  his 
overcoat.  He  turned  to  hang  the  coat  upon  a  bush, 
then  he  sniffed  the  air,  and  a  puzzled  look  came  upon 
his  face.  He  sniffed  again,  hurriedly,  hungrily.  He 
drew  in  great  breaths  of  it,  and  his  eyes  shone  with  a 
strange  light.  It  was  wonderful  air.  It  brought  life 
to  the  Dream.  It  rose  up  within  him,  ten  times  more 
lusty  than  on  the  day  it  was  born,  and  his  limbs  trem- 
bled as  he  drew  in  the  hot,  scented  breezes  that  breed 
the  Wanderlust  and  shorten  the  long  trails  of  the 
world. 

Big  Ivan  clutched  his  coat  and  ran  to  the  little 
cottage.  He  burst  through  the  door,  startling  Anna, 
who  was  busy  with  her  housework. 

"The  Spring!"  he  cried.     "The  Spring!" 

He  took  her  arm  and  dragged  her  to  the  door.  Stand- 
ing together  they  sniffed  the  sweet  breezes.  In  silence 
they  listened  to  the  song  of  the  river.  The  Beresina 
had  changed  from  a  whining,  fretful  tune  into  a  lilting, 
sweet  song  that  would  set  the  legs  of  lovers  dancing. 
Anna  pointed  to  a  green  bud  on  a  bush  beside  the 
door. 

"It  came  this  minute,"  she  murmured. 

"Yes,"  said  Ivan.  "The  little  fairies  brought  it 
there  to  show  us  that  spring  has  come  to  stay." 

Together  they  turned  and  walked  to  the  mantel. 
Big  Ivan  took  up  the  earthenware  pot,  carried  it  to  the 


94  THE  CITIZEN 

table,  and  spilled  its  contents  upon  the  well-scrubbed 
boards.  He  counted  while  Anna  stood  beside  him,  her 
fingers  clutching  his  coarse  blouse.  It  was  a  slow 
business,  because  Ivan's  big  blunt  fingers  were  not 
used  to  such  work,  but  it  was  over  at  last.  He  stacked 
the  coins  into  neat  piles,  then  he  straightened  himself 
and  turned  to  the  woman  at  his  side. 

"It  is  enough,"  he  said  quietly.  "We  will  go  at 
once.  If  it  was  not  enough,  we  would  have  to  go  be- 
cause the  Dream  is  upon  me  and  I  hate  this  place." 

"As  you  say,"  murmured  Anna.  "The  wife  of 
Littin,  the  butcher,  will  buy  our  chairs  and  our  bed. 
I  spoke  to  her  yesterday." 

Poborino,  the  smith;  his  crippled  son;  Yanansk, 
the  baker;  Dankov,  the  tailor,  and  a  score  of  others 
were  out  upon  the  village  street  on  the  morning  that 
Big  Ivan  and  Anna  set  out.  They  were  inclined  to 
jeer  at  Ivan,  but  something  upon  the  face  of  the  giant 
made  them  afraid.  Hand  in  hand  the  big  man  and 
his  wife  walked  down  the  street,  their  faces  turned 
toward  Bobruisk,  Ivan  balancing  upon  his  head  a 
heavy  trunk  that  no  other  man  in  the  village  could 
have  lifted. 

At  the  end  of  the  street  a  stripling  with  bright  eyes 
and  yellow  curls  clutched  the  hand  of  Ivan  and  looked 
into  his  face. 

"I  know  what  is  sending  you,"  he  cried. 

"Ay,  you  know,"  said  Ivan,  looking  into  the  eyes 
of  the  other. 

"It  came  to  me  yesterday,"  murmured  the  stripling. 
"I  got  it  from  the  breezes.  They  are  free,  so  are  the 


THE  CITIZEN  95 

birds  and  the  little  clouds  and  the  river.  I  wish  I 
could  go." 

"Keep  your  dream,"  said  Ivan  softly.  "Nurse  it, 
for  it  is  the  dream  of  a  man." 

Anna,  who  was  crying  softly,  touched  the  blouse  of 
the  boy.  "At  the  back  of  our  cottage,  near  the  bush 
that  bears  the  red  berries,  a  pot  is  buried,"  she  said. 
"Dig  it  up  and  take  it  home  with  you  and  when  you 
have  a  kopeck  drop  it  in.  It  is  a  good  pot." 

The  stripling  understood.  He  stooped  and  kissed 
the  hand  of  Anna,  and  Big  Ivan  patted  him  upon  the 
back.  They  were  brother  dreamers  and  they  under- 
stood each  other. 

Boris  Lugan  has  sung  the  song  of  the  versts  that 
eat  up  one's  courage  as  well  as  the  leather  of  one's 
shoes. 

"Versts!    Versts!    Scores  and  scores  of  them! 
Versts!    Versts!    A  million  or  more  of  them! 
Dust!    Dust!    And  the  devils  who  play  in  it 
Blinding  us  fools  who  forever  must  stay  in  it." 

Big  Ivan  and  Anna  faced  the  long  versts  to  Bobruisk, 
but  they  were  not  afraid  of  the  dust  devils.  They  had 
the  Dream.  It  made  their  hearts  light  and  took  the 
weary  feeling  from  their  feet.  They  were  on  their  way. 
America  was  a  long,  long  journey,  but  they  had  started, 
and  every  verst  they  covered  lessened  the  number 
that  lay  between  them  and  the  Promised  Land. 

"I  am  glad  the  boy  spoke  to  us,"  said  Anna. 

"And  I  am  glad,"  said  Ivan.  "Some  day  he  will 
come  and  eat  with  us  in  America." 


96  THE  CITIZEN 

They  came  to  Bobruisk.  Holding  hands,  they 
walked  into  it  late  one  afternoon.  They  were  eighty- 
nine  versts  from  the  little  village  on  the  Beresina,  but 
they  were  not  afraid.  The  Dream  spoke  to  Ivan,  and 
his  big  hand  held  the  hand  of  Anna.  The  railway  ran 
through  Bobruisk,  and  that  evening  they  stood  and 
looked  at  the  shining  rails  that  went  out  in  the  moon- 
light like  silver  tongs  reaching  out  for  a  low-hanging 
star. 

And  they  came  face  to  face  with  the  Terror  that 
evening,  the  Terror  that  had  helped  the  spring  breezes 
and  the  sunshine  to  plant  the  Dream  in  the  brain  of 
Big  Ivan. 

They  were  walking  down  a  dark  side  street  when 
they  saw  a  score  of  men  and  women  creep  from  the 
door  of  a  squat,  unpainted  building.  The  little  group 
remained  on  the  sidewalk  for  a  minute  as  if  uncertain 
about  the  way  they  should  go,  then  from  the  corner  of 
the  street  came  a  cry  of  "Police!"  and  the  twenty 
pedestrians  ran  in  different  directions. 

It  was  no  false  alarm.  Mounted  police  charged 
down  the  dark  thoroughfare  swinging  their  swords  as 
they  rode  at  the  scurrying  men  and  women  who  raced 
for  shelter.  Big  Ivan  dragged  Anna  into  a  doorway, 
and  toward  their  hiding  place  ran  a  young  boy  who, 
like  themselves,  had  no  connection  with  the  group  and 
who  merely  desired  to  get  out  of  harm's  way  till  the 
storm  was  over. 

The  boy  was  not  quick  enough  to  escape  the  charge. 
A  trooper  pursued  him,  overtook  him  before  he  reached 
the  sidewalk,  and  knocked  him  down  with  a  quick 


THE  CITIZEN  97 

stroke  given  with  the  flat  of  his  blade.  His  horse 
struck  the  boy  with  one  of  his  hoofs  as  the  lad  stumbled 
on  his  face. 

Big  Ivan  growled  like  an  angry '  bear,  and  sprang 
from  his  hiding  place.  The  trooper's  horse  had  carried 
him  on  to  the  sidewalk,  and  Ivan  seized  the  bridle  and 
flung  the  animal  on  its  haunches.  The  policeman 
leaned  forward  to  strike  at  the  giant,  but  Ivan  of  the 
Bridge  gripped  the  left  leg  of  the  horseman  and  tore 
him  from  his  saddle. 

The  horse  galloped  off,  leaving  its  rider  lying  beside 
the  moaning  boy  who  was  unlucky  enough  to  be  in  a 
street  where  a  score  of  students  were  holding  a  meet- 
ing. 

Anna  dragged  Ivan  back  into  the  passageway. 
More  police  were  charging  down  the  street,  and  their 
position  was  a  dangerous  one. 

"Ivan!"  she  cried,  "Ivan!  Remember  the  Dream! 
America,  Ivan!  America!  Come  this  way!  Quick!" 

With  strong  hands  she  dragged  him  down  the  pas- 
sage. It  opened  into  a  narrow  lane,  and,  holding  each 
other's  hands,  they  hurried  toward  the  place  where 
they  had  taken  lodgings.  From  far  off  came  screams 
and  hoarse  orders,  curses  and  the  sound  of  galloping 
hoofs.  The  Terror  was  abroad. 

Big  Ivan  spoke  softly  as  they  entered  the  little  room 
they  had  taken.  "He  had  a  face  like  the  boy  to  whom 
you  gave  the  lucky  pot,"  he  said.  "Did  you  notice 
it  in  the  moonlight  when  the  trooper  struck  him 
down?" 

"Yes,"  she  answered.     "I  saw." 


98  THE  CITIZEN 

They  left  Bobruisk  next  morning.  They  rode  away 
on  a  great,  puffing,  snorting  train  that  terrified  Anna. 
The  engineer  turned  a  stopcock  as  they  were  passing 
the  engine,  and  Anna  screamed  while  Ivan  nearly 
dropped  the  big  trunk.  The  engineer  grinned,  but  the 
giant  looked  up  at  him  and  the  grin  faded.  Ivan  of  the 
Bridge  was  startled  by  the  rush  of  hot  steam,  but  he 
was  afraid  of  no  man. 

The  train  went  roaring  by  little  villages  and  great 
pasture  stretches.  The  real  journey  had  begun.  They 
began  to  love  the  powerful  engine.  It  was  eating  up 
the  versts  at  a  tremendous  rate.  They  looked  at  each 
other  from  time  to  time  and  smiled  like  two  children. 

They  came  to  Minsk,  the  biggest  town  they  had 
ever  seen.  They  looked  out  from  the  car  windows  at 
the  miles  of  wooden  buildings,  at  the  big  church  of  St. 
Catharine,  and  the  woolen  mills.  Minsk  would  have 
frightened  them  if  they  hadn't  had  the  Dream.  The 
farther  they  went  from  the  little  village  on  the  Beresina 
the  more  courage  the  Dream  gave  to  them. 

On  and  on  went  the  train,  the  wheels  singing  the 
song  of  the  road.  Fellow  travelers  asked  them  where 
they  were  going.  "To  America,"  Ivan  would  answer. 

"To  America?"  they  would  cry.  "May  the  little 
saints  guide  you.  It  is  a  long  way,  and  you  will  be 
lonely." 

"No,  we  shall  not  be  lonely,"  Ivan  would  say. 

"Ha!  you  are  going  with  friends?" 

"No,  we  have  no  friends,  but  we  have  something 
that  keeps  us  from  being  lonely."  And  when  Ivan 
would  make  that  reply  Anna  would  pat  his  hand  and 


THE  CITIZEN  99 

the  questioner  would  wonder  if  it  was  a  charm  or  a 
holy  relic  that  the  bright-eyed  couple  possessed. 

They  ran  through  Vilna,  on  through  flat  stretches 
of  Courland  to  Libau,  where  they  saw  the  sea.  They 
sat  and  stared  at  it  for  a  whole  day,  talking  little  but 
watching  it  with  wide,  wondering  eyes.  And  they 
stared  at  the  great  ships  that  came  rocking  in  from 
distant  ports,  their  sides  gray  with  the  salt  from  the 
big  combers  which  they  had  battled  with. 

No  wonder  this  America  of  ours  is  big.  We  draw  the 
brave  ones  from  the  old  lands,  the  brave  ones  whose 
dreams  are  like  the  guiding  sign  that  was  given  to  the 
Israelites  of  old — a  pillar  of  cloud  by  day,  a  pillar  of 
fire  by  night. 

The  harbor  master  spoke  to  Ivan  and  Anna  as  they 
watched  the  restless  waters. 

"Where  are  you  going,  children?" 

"To  America,"  answered  Ivan. 

"A  long  way.  Three  ships  bound  for  America  went 
down  last  month." 

"Ours  will  not  sink,"  said  Ivan. 

"Why?" 

"Because  I  know  it  will  not." 

The  harbor  master  looked  at  the  strange  blue  eyes 
of  the  giant,  and  spoke  softly.  "You  have  the  eyes 
of  a  man  who  sees  things,"  he  said.  "There  was  a 
Norwegian  sailor  in  the  White  Queen,  who  had  eyes 
like  yours,  and  he  could  see  Jeath." 

"I  see  life!"  said  Ivan  boldly.    "A  free  life " 

"Hush!"  said  the  harbor  master.  "Do  not  speak 
so  loud."  He  walked  swiftly  away,  but  he  dropped  a 


ioo  THE  CITIZEN 

ruble  into  Anna's  hand  as  he  passed  her  by.  "For 
luck,"  he  murmured.  "May  the  little  saints  look 
after  you  on  the  big  waters." 

They  boarded  the  ship,  and  the  Dream  gave  them 
a  courage  that  surprised  them.  There  were  others 
going  aboard,  and  Ivan  and  Anna  felt  that  those  others 
were  also  persons  who  possessed  dreams.  She  saw  the 
dreams  in  their  eyes.  There  were  Slavs,  Poles,  Letts, 
Jews,  and  Livonians,  all  bound  for  the  land  where 
dreams  come  true.  They  were  a  little  afraid — not  two 
per  cent  of  them  had  ever  seen  a  ship  before — yet  their 
dreams  gave  them  courage. 

The  emigrant  ship  was  dragged  from  her  pier  by  a 
grunting  tug  and  went  floundering  down  the  Baltic 
Sea.  Night  came  down,  and  the  devils  who,  according 
to  the  Esthonian  fishermen,  live  in  the  bottom  of  the 
Baltic,  got  their  shoulders  under  the  stern  of  the  ship 
and  tried  to  stand  her  on  her  head.  They  whipped  up 
white  combers  that  sprang  on  her  flanks  and  tried  to 
crush  her,  and  the  wind  played  a  devil's  lament  in  her 
rigging.  Anna  lay  sick  in  the  stuffy  women's  quarters, 
and  Ivan  could  not  get  near  her.  But  he  sent  her 
messages.  He  told  her  not  to  mind  the  sea  devils,  to 
think  of  the  Dream,  the  Great  Dream  that  would 
become  real  in  the  land  to  which  they  were  bound. 
Ivan  of  the  Bridge  grew  to  full  stature  on  that  first 
night  out  from  Libau.  The  battered  old  craft  that 
carried  him  slouched  before  the  waves  that  swept  over 
her  decks,  but  he  was  not  afraid.  Down  among  the 
million  and  one  smells  of  the  steerage  he  induced  a 
thin-faced  Livonian  to  play  upon  a  mouth  organ,  and 


THE  CITIZEN  101 

Big  Ivan  sang  Paleer's  "Song  of  Freedom"  in  a  voice 
that  drowned  the  creaking  of  the  old  vessel's  timbers, 
and  made  the  seasick  ones  forget  their  sickness.  They 
sat  up  in  their  berths  and  joined  in  the  chorus,  their 
eyes  shining  brightly  in  the  half  gloom: 

"  Freedom  for  serf  and  for  slave, 

Freedom  for  all  men  who  crave 

Their  right  to  be  free 

And  who  hate  to  bend  knee 

But  to  Him  who  this  right  to  them  gave." 

It  was  well  that  these  emigrants  had  dreams.  They 
wanted  them.  The  sea  devils  chased  the  lumbering 
steamer.  They  hung  to  her  bows  and  pulled  her 
for'ard  deck  under  emerald-green  rollers.  They  clung 
to  her  stern  and  hoisted  her  nose  till  Big  Ivan  thought 
that  he  could  touch  the  door  of  heaven  by  standing  on 
her  blunt  snout.  Miserable,  cold,  ill,  and  sleepless, 
the  emigrants  crouched  in  their  quarters,  and  to  them 
Ivan  and  the  thin-faced  Livonian  sang  the  "Song  of 
Freedom." 

The  emigrant  ship  pounded  through  the  Cattegat, 
swung  southward  through  the  Skagerrack  and  the 
bleak  North  Sea.  But  the  storm  pursued  her.  The 
big  waves  snarled  and  bit  at  her,  and  the  captain  and 
the  chief  officer  consulted  with  each  other.  They 
decided  to  run  into  the  Thames,  and  the  harried 
steamer  nosed  her  way  in  and  anchored  off  Gravesend. 

An  examination  was  made,  and  the  agents  decided 
to  transship  the  emigrants.  They  were  taken  to  Lon- 
don and  thence  by  train  to  Liverpool,  and  Ivan  and 


loi  THE  CITIZEN 

Anna  sat  again  side  by  side,  holding  hands  and  smiling 
at  each  other  as  the  third-class  emigrant  train  from 
Euston  raced  down  through  the  green  Midland  coun- 
ties to  grimy  Liverpool. 

"You  are  not  afraid?"  Ivan  would  say  to  her  each 
time  she  looked  at  him. 

"It  is  a  long  way,  but  the  Dream  has  given  me 
much  courage,"  she  said. 

"To-day  I  spoke  to  a  Lett  whose  brother  works  in 
New  York  City,"  said  the  giant.  "Do  you  know  how 
much  money  he  earns  each  day?" 

"How  much?"  she  questioned. 

"Three  rubles,  and  he  calls  the  policemen  by  their 
first  names." 

"  You  will  earn  five  rubles,  my  Ivan,"  she  murmured. 
"There  is  no  one  as  strong  as  you." 

Once  again  they  were  herded  into  the  bowels  of  a 
big  ship  that  steamed  away  through  the  fog  banks  of 
the  Mersey  out  into  the  Irish  Sea.  There  were  more 
dreamers  now,  nine  hundred  of  them,  and  Anna  and 
Ivan  were  more  comfortable.  And  these  new  emi- 
grants, English,  Irish,  Scotch,  French,  and  German, 
knew  much  concerning  America.  Ivan  was  certain 
that  he  would  earn  at  least  three  rubles  a  day.  He  was 
very  strong.  • 

On  the  deck  he  defeated  all  comers  in  a  tug  of  war, 
and  the  captain  of  the  ship  came  up  to  him  and  felt  his 
muscles. 

"  The  country  that  lets  men  like  you  get  away 
from  it  is  run  badly,"  he  said.  "  Why  did  you  leave 
it?" 


THE  CITIZEN  103 

The  interpreter  translated  what  the  captain  said, 
and  through  the  interpreter  Ivan  answered. 

"I  had  a  Dream,"  he  said,  "a  Dream  of  freedom." 

"Good,"  cried  the  captain.  "Why  should  a  man 
with  muscles  like  yours  have  his  face  ground  into  the 
dust?" 

The  soul  of  Big  Ivan  grew  during  those  days.  He 
felt  himself  a  man,  a  man  who  was  born  upright  to 
speak  his  thoughts  without  fear. 

The  ship  rolled  into  Queenstown  one  bright  morn- 
ing, and  Ivan  and  his  nine  hundred  steerage  compan- 
ions crowded  the  for'ard  deck.  A  boy  in  a  rowboat 
threw  a  line  to  the  deck,  and  after  it  had  been  fastened 
to  a  stanchion  he  came  up  hand  over  hand.  The 
emigrants  watched  him  curiously.  An  old  woman 
sitting  in  the  boat  pulled  off  her  shoes,  sat  in  a  loop  of 
the  rope,  and  lifted  her  hand  as  a  signal  to  her  son  on 
deck. 

"Hey,  fellers,"  said  the  boy,  "help  me  pull  me 
muwer  up.  She  wants  to  sell  a  few  dozen  apples,  an* 
they  won't  let  her  up  the  gangway!" 

Big  Ivan  didn't  understand  the  words,  but  he 
guessed  what  the  boy  wanted.  He  made  one  of  a  half 
dozen  who  gripped  the  rope  and  started  to  pull  the 
ancient  apple  woman  to  the  deck. 

They  had  her  halfway  up  the  side  when  an  under- 
sized third  officer  discovered  what  they  were  doing. 
He  called  to  a  steward,  and  the  steward  sprang  to 
obey. 

"Turn  a  hose  on  her!"  cried  the  officer.  "Turn  a 
hose  on  the  old  woman!" 


io4  THE  CITIZEN 

The  steward  rushed  for  the  hose.  He  ran  with  it 
to  the  side  of  the  ship  with  the  intention  of  squirting 
the  old  woman,  who  was  swinging  in  midair  and  ex- 
horting the  six  men  who  were  dragging  her  to  the 
deck. 

"Pull!"  she  cried.  "Sure,  I'll  give  every  one  of  ye 
a  rosy  red  apple  an*  me  blessing  with  it." 

The  steward  aimed  the  muzzle  of  the  hose,  and  Big 
Ivan  of  the  Bridge  let  go  of  the  rope  and  sprang  at  him. 
The  fist  of  the  great  Russian  went  out  like  a  battering 
ram;  it  struck  the  steward  between  the  eyes,  and  he 
dropped  upon  the  deck.  He  lay  like  one  dead,  the 
muzzle  of  the  hose  wriggling  from  his  limp  hands. 

The  third  officer  and  the  interpreter  rushed  at  Big 
Ivan,  who  stood  erect,  his  hands  clenched. 

"Ask  the  big  swine  why  he  did  it,"  roared  the 
officer. 

"Because  he  is  a  coward!"  cried  Ivan.  "They 
wouldn't  do  that  in  America!" 

"What  does  the  big  brute  know  about  America?" 
cried  the  officer. 

"Tell  him  I  have  dreamed  of  it,"  shouted  Ivan. 
"Tell  him  it  is  in  my  Dream.  Tell  him  I  will  kill  him 
if  he  turns  the  water  upon  this  old  woman." 

The  apple  seller  was  on  deck  then,  and  with  the 
wisdom  of  the  Celt  she  understood.  She  put  her  lean 
hand  upon  the  great  head  of  the  Russian  and  blessed 
him  in  Gaelic.  Ivan  bowed  before  her,  then  as  «he 
offered  him  a  rosy  apple  he  led  her  toward  Anna,  a 
great  Viking  leading  a  withered  old  woman  who  walked 
with  the  grace  of  a  duchess. 


THE  CITIZEN  105 

"Please  don't  touch  him,"  she  cried,  turning  to  the 
officer.  "We  have  been  waiting  for  your  ship  for  six 
hours,  and  we  have  only  five  dozen  apples  to  sell.  It's 
a  great  man  he  is.  Sure  he's  as  big  as  Finn  MacCool." 

Some  one  pulled  the  steward  behind  a  ventilator 
and  revived  him  by  squirting  him  with  water  from  the 
hose  which  he  had  tried  to  turn  upon  the  old  woman. 
The  third  officer  slipped  quietly  away. 

The  Atlantic  was  kind  to  the  ship  that  carried  Ivan 
and  Anna.  Through  sunny  days  they  sat  up  on  deck 
and  watched  the  horizon.  They  wanted  to  be  among 
those  who  would  get  the  first  glimpse  of  the  wonder- 
land. 

They  saw  it  on  a  morning  with  sunshine  and  soft 
winds.  Standing  together  in  the  bow,  they  looked  at 
the  smear  upon  the  horizon,  and  their  eyes  filled  with 
tears.  They  forgot  the  long  road  to  Bobruisk,  the 
rocking  journey  to  Libau,  the  mad  buckjumping  boat 
in  whose  timbers  the  sea  devils  of  the  Baltic  had  bored 
holes.  Everything  unpleasant  was  forgotten,  because 
the  Dream  filled  them  with  a  great  happiness. 

The  inspectors  at  Ellis  Island  were  interested  in 
Ivan.  They  walked  around  him  and  prodded  his 
muscles,  and  he  smiled  down  upon  them  good-na- 
turedly. 

"A  fine  animal,"  said  one.  "Gee,  he's  a  new  white 
hope!  Ask  him  can  he  fight?" 

An  interpreter  put  the  question,  and  Ivan  nodded. 
"I  have  fought,"  he  said. 

"Gee!"  cried  the  inspector.  "Ask  him  was  it  for 
purses  or  what?" 


106  THE  CITIZEN 

"For  freedom,"  answered  Ivan.  "For  freedom  to 
stretch  my  legs  and  straighten  my  neck!" 

Ivan  and  Anna  left  the  Government  ferryboat  at  the 
Battery.  They  started  to  walk  uptown,  making  for 
the  East  Side,  Ivan  carrying  the  big  trunk  that  no 
other  man  could  lift. 

It  was  a  wonderful  morning.  The  city  was  bathed 
in  warm  sunshine,  and  the  well-dressed  men  and 
women  who  crowded  the  sidewalks  made  the  two 
immigrants  think  that  it  was  a  festival  day.  Ivan  and 
Anna  stared  at  each  other  in  amazement.  They  had 
never  seen  such  dresses  as  those  worn  by  the  smiling 
women  who  passed  them  by;  they  had  never  seen 
such  well-groomed  men. 

"It  is  a  feast  day  for  certain,"  said  Anna. 

"They  are  dressed  like  princes  and  princesses," 
murmured  Ivan.  "There  are  no  poor  here,  Anna. 
None." 

Like  two  simple  children,  they  walked  along  the 
streets  of  the  City  of  Wonder.  What  a  contrast  it  was 
to  the  gray,  stupid  towns  where  the  Terror  waited  to 
spring  upon  the  cowed  people.  In  Bobruisk,  Minsk, 
Vilna,  and  Libau  the  people  were  sullen  and  afraid. 
They  walked  in  dread,  but  in  the  City  of  Wonder 
beside  the  glorious  Hudson  every  person  seemed  happy 
and  contented. 

They  lost  their  way,  but  they  walked  on,  looking  at 
the  wonderful  shop  windows,  the  roaring  elevated 
trains,  and  the  huge  skyscrapers.  Hours  afterward 
they  found  themselves  in  Fifth  Avenue  near  Thirty- 
third  Street,  and  there  the  miracle  happened  to  the 


THE  CITIZEN  107 

two  Russian  immigrants.  It  was  a  big  miracle  inas- 
much as  it  proved  the  Dream  a  truth,  a  great  truth. 

Ivan  and  Anna  attempted  to  cross  the  avenue,  but 
they  became  confused  in  the  snarl  of  traffic.  They 
dodged  backward  and  forward  as  the  stream  of  automo- 
biles swept  by  them.  Anna  screamed,  and,  in  response 
to  her  scream,  a  traffic  policeman,  resplendent  in  a 
new  uniform,  rushed  to  her  side.  He  took  the  arm 
of  Anna  and  flung  up  a  commanding  hand.  The 
charging  autos  halted.  For  five  blocks  north  and 
south  they  jammed  on  the  brakes  when  the  unexpected 
interruption  occurred,  and  Big  Ivan  gasped. 

"Don't  be  flurried,  little  woman,"  said  the  cop. 
"Sure  I  can  tame  'em  by  liftin'  me  hand." 

Anna  didn't  understand  what  he  said,  but  she  knew 
it  was  something  nice  by  the  manner  in  which  his  Irish 
eyes  smiled  down  upon  her.  And  in  front  of  the  wait- 
ing automobiles  he  led  her  with  the  same  care  that  he 
would  give  to  a  duchess,  while  Ivan,  carrying  the  big 
trunk,  followed  them,  wondering  much.  Ivan's  mind 
went  back  to  Bobruisk  on  the  night  the  Terror  was 
abroad. 

The  policeman  led  Anna  to  the  sidewalk,  patted 
Ivan  good-naturedly  upon  the  shoulder,  and  then  with 
a  sharp  whistle  unloosed  the  waiting .  stream  of  cars 
that  had  been  held  up  so  that  two  Russian  immigrants 
could  cross  the  avenue. 

Big  Ivan  of  the  Bridge  took  the  trunk  from  his  head 
and  put  it  on  the  ground.  He  reached  out  his  arms 
and  folded  Anna  in  a  great  embrace.  His  eyes  were 
wet. 


io8  THE  CITIZEN 

"The  Dream  is  true!"  he  cried.  "Did  you  see, 
Anna?  We  are  as  good  as  they!  This  is  the  land  where 
a  muzhik  is  as  good  as  a  prince  of  the  blood!" 

The  President  was  nearing  the  close  of  his  address. 
Anna  shook  Ivan,  and  Ivan  came  out  of  the  trance 
which  the  President's  words  had  brought  upon  him. 
He  sat  up  and  listened  intently: 

We  grow  great  by  dreams.  All  big  men  are  dreamers. 
They  see  things  in  the  soft  haze  of  a  spring  day  or  in  the 
red  fire  of  a  long  winter's  evening.  Some  of  us  let  those 
great  dreams  die,  but  others  nourish  and  protect  them, 
nurse  them  through  bad  days  till  they  bring  them  to  the 
sunshine  and  light  which  comes  always  to  those  who 
sincerely  hope  that  their  dreams  will  come  true. 

The  President  finished.  For  a  moment  he  stood 
looking  down  at  the  faces  turned  up  to  him,  and  Big 
Ivan  of  the  Bridge  thought  that  the  President  smiled 
at  him.  Ivan  seized  Anna's  hand  and  held  it  tight. 

"He  knew  of  my  Dream!"  he  cried.  "He  knew  of 
it.  Did  you  hear  what  he  said  about  the  dreams  of  a 
spring  day?" 

"Of  course  he  knew,"  said  Anna.  "He  is  the  wisest 
man  in  America,  where  there  are  many  wise  men. 
Ivan,  you  are  a  citizen  now." 

"And  you  are  a  citizen,  Anna." 

The  band  started  to  play  "My  Country,  'tis  of 
Thee,"  and  Ivan  and  Anna  got  to  their  feet.  Standing 
side  by  side,  holding  hands,  they  joined  in  with  the 
others  who  had  found  after  long  days  of  journeying 
the  blessed  land  where  dreams  come  true. 

— JAMES  FRANCIS  DWYER. 


THE  INDIAN  OF  THE  RESERVATION 

THE  big,  square,  barren,  rude  room  which  in  its 
existence  had  progressed  from  store  to  schoolroom 
and  on  to  council  hall,  was  filled  to  overflowing  with  a 
throng  of  anachronous  humanity,  rank  on  rank,  tier 
behind  tier.  There  was  the  sound  of  moccasins  slipping 
grittily  over  the  knotty  floor,  of  the  dull,  rhythmic 
thudding  of  a  mother's  foot  as  she  trotted  her  fretful 
baby,  the  rustling  of  soft  garments,  the  stirring  of 
unhurried  bodies,  the  hissing  of  stealthy  whispers. 
Here  and  there  two  Indians  might  be  seen  conversing 
in  the  sign  language;  their  hands,  shielded  from  sight 
by  encircling  backs,  were  lifted  scarcely  above  the 
level  of  their  laps. 

The  people  were  massed  one  might  say  ethnolog- 
ically.  The  main  part  of  the  crowd  was  Indian,  squat- 
ting, seated  on  benches,  or  standing  leaning  against 
the  walls.  The  two  tribes  sat  separately,  as  did  also 
the  sexes  of  each.  To  right  and  left  at  the  tapering 
ends  of  the  rows  were  the  mixed-bloods,  dressed  mainly 
like  the  whites  except  that  their  garments  looked  more 
home-made,  more  patternless,  more  illy  put.  Then 
quite  at  one  end  of  the  room  and  grouped  about  the 
chairman's  table  sat  the  whites;  school  and  Agency 
employees,  traders,  soldiers,  ranch  neighbors;  an  in- 

109 


i io    THE  INDIAN  OF  THE  RESERVATION 

different,  self-seeking,  heterogeneous  group.  In  the 
midst  of  these  last,  dapper,  conspicuously  well-dressed, 
and  well-groomed,  presided  the  inspector  from  Wash- 
ington. His  old,  dignified  face,  slightly  pompous, 
was  crowned  with  gray  hair  brushed  back  from  his 
brow.  His  hands  rested  squarely  upon  his  knees.  By 
his  side,  taking  notes,  sat  his  stenographer,  his  glance 
half  curious  and  half  supercilious  playing  constantly 
over  the  faces  of  the  throng.  At  either  end  of  the  little 
table  behind  which  sat  the  inspector,  were  stationed 
the  interpreters,  one  for  each  tribe.  The  eyes  of  these 
men  were  searching,  though  their  lips  seemed  to  mock 
slightly,  and  when  they  spoke,  rising  to  interpret,  even 
though  they  passed  on  the  phrases  with  a  certain 
guarded  vehemence,  they  seemed  consciously  to  pre- 
serve a  detached  attitude,  as  do  those  who  speak  but 
will  not  be  held  accountable  for  what  they  say. 

Perhaps  the  arrangement  that  caused  the  mixed- 
bloods  and  the  other  younger  Indians  to  be  the  first 
to  deliver  their  speeches  was  intentional  on  the  part  of 
someone.  At  any  rate  one  by  one  they  arose,  in  over- 
alls, in  spurs,  in  bright  neckerchiefs,  differing  from 
each  other  in  type  and  temperament,  as  differed  also 
those  two  tribes,  and  indeed,  the  two  races,  represented 
there  within  the  council  room. 

Occasionally  after  some  speech  the  inspector  would 
get  up  and  pronounce  in  continuance  a  few  elucidating 
words.  He  gesticulated  slightly  and  conventionally. 
He  bent  a  little  toward  the  interpreters,  each  in  turn. 
His  words  came  slowly  and  with  unction. 

The  subject  of  the  council  was  the  desire  of  the 


THE  INDIAN  OF  THE  RESERVATION    in 

Indian  Bureau  to  throw  open  to  white  settlement  a 
half  of  the  reservation.  The  mixed-bloods  and  the 
younger  Indians  were,  though  they  spoke  but  briefly, 
in  accord  in  favoring  the  execution  of  the  plan.  Their 
words,  however,  from  some  lack  in  themselves  of 
knowledge  or  of  conviction,  were  not  uttered  in  a 
manner  calculated  to  tip  the  scale  greatly  their  way. 

"It's  a  question  of  water  rights,"  they  said.  "We 
must  have  money  to  buy  those  rights  and  how  else  can 
we  obtain  it  ?  It's  an  obligation  to  our  children." 

Again  and  again  the  same  note  was  struck.  One  by 
one  the  young  men  arose,  and  one  by  one  sat  down 
again.  The  interpreters  mopped  their  tired  brows. 
The  inspector  sipped  frequently  from  a  glass  of  water 
upon  his  table. 

The  air  was  full  of  the  odor  of  people,  pungent  with 
the  herb  perfume  worn  by  the  Indians  in  little  sacks 
sewed  to  the  clothing,  acrid  with  the  smell  of  sage 
clinging  to  shawls  and  dresses,  with  the  flavor  of 
smoke-tanned  buckskin.  A  half-open  window  let  in 
a  little  fitful  breeze  that  played  wantonly  with  the 
dust  showing  in  the  sunlight  of  the  upper  reaches  of 
the  room,  flirting  and  whisking  about  the  heads  of 
the  throng. 

At  last  it  came  time  for  the  weightier  speeches,  for 
those  of  the  councilmen,  of  the  chiefs,  of  indeed  the 
older  men  of  the  two  tribes,  the  patriarchs  of  this 
patriarchal  people. 

"Sell  our  land?"  they  cried.  "Retreat?  Give  up? 
Be  forced  into  contact  with  intermingling  whites? 
Take  money  in  place  of  our  land  ?  What,  money  for 


ii2    THE  INDIAN  OF  THE  RESERVATION 

the  good  of  these  traders  who  will  get  it  all  from  us 
in  the  end?"  Their  old  faces  hardened;  their  eyes 
flamed.  "Give  up?  Retreat?  Move  on?  Abrogate 
the  old  promises,  the  old  treaties?  What,  again?" 
Their  lips  twisted  bitterly.  "Do  you  not  know,  does 
not  the  Great  Father  at  Washington  know,  that  all  we 
ask  now  of  life  is  a  little  land,  a  little  peace,  a  little 
place  wherein  to  live  quietly  our  quiet  life,  and  in  the 
end  a  little  ground  for  our  narrow  bed?  Move  on! 
That  we  think  was  the  first  word  the  whites — "  the 
"  outsiders,"  the  "  aliens,"  was  the  name  they  in  the  In- 
dian tongue  gave  this  other  race — "  said  to  us.  It  seems 
they  are  saying  it  yet."  The  soft  bitter  voices  ceased; 
the  old  men  sank  into  their  seats,  the  interpreters,  too, 
relaxed,  wiping  their  faces. 

The  inspector  stood  up  cautiously,  apologetically 
even.  "But  these  old  men,  the  chiefs,  do  not  seem  to 
have  caught  the  point.  The  whole  question  of  selling 
or  not  selling  turns  on  the  matter  of  their  water  rights; 
on  theirs  and  their  children's  as  has  been  said.  Land 
even  in  this  beautiful  Wyoming  valley  is  a  mockery 
without  water.  They  can  I  am  sure  understand  that; 
water  they  must  have." 

An  old  chief  rose  solemnly,  turned  deep,  scornful 
eyes  upon  the  inspector.  "Let  the  white  man  from 
Washington  go  but  a  mile  yonder,"  extended  arm 
pointed  that  way,  "and  he  will  see  the  river  that  flows 
down  our  valley  and  waters  our  land.  It  is  there.  It 
is  ours.  It  is  born  in  these  mountains  above  us.  God 
made  them,  I  suppose  as  he  made  it.  It  is  ours." 

Along  the  packed  rows  there  was  a  slight  stirring. 


THE  INDIAN  OF  THE  RESERVATION    113 

Patiently  again  the  inspector  arose.  "I  know  that  it 
is  hard  for  the  old  people  to  understand  that  having 
water  does  not  necessarily  mean  having  rights  to  that 
water.  There  exist  hundreds  of  white  men  below  you, 
beyond  the  border  of  your  reservation,  who  have  taken 
up  claims  along  this  same  stream  and  who  have  filed 
on  its  water  prior  to  any  Indian  having  done  so.  The 
State  must  recognize  this  priority.  The  whites  have 
filed  on  the  water  and  have  paid  the  dues.  Beside 
that  as  the  law  stands  now  the  Indians  cannot  individ- 
ually take  out  water  rights.  I  know  that  you  will  say 
that  when  this  reservation  was  given  to  these  two 
tribes,  a  matter  of  a  generation  and  a  half  ago,  the 
water  was  included  with  the  land,  'to  the  center  of  the 
streams  bordering  the  reservation/  as  your  old  treaty 
reads.  But  times  and  conditions  have  changed  since 
then.  At  that  period  the  Federal  Government  con- 
trolled the  water  of  Wyoming,  now  its  disposition 
has  been  turned  over  to  the  State.  Where  the  Indians 
stand  in  this  matter  has  never  been  decided  by  law." 

The  mixed-bloods  who  understood  at  least  partially, 
shifted  uneasily. 

"But  now — although  the  question  of  priority  has 
still  not  been  decided — the  Indian  Bureau — which  I 
represent — says  that  you  as  a  tribe  may  buy  your 
water  rights.  For  this  you  must  have  money."  He 
named  a  sum  reaching  far  into  the  thousands.  ™ie 
sale  of  your  land  will  bring  you  this  amount  of  money, 
at  least.  This  thing  is  intricate  and  impossible  I  be- 
lieve to  elucidate  to  the  older  people,  your  leaders. 
They  must,  I  fear,  just  hear  my  statements  and,  if 


ii4    THE  INDIAN  OF  THE  RESERVATION 

they  can,  believe."  With  his  hands  he  made  a  depre- 
cating little  gesture.  Then  he  sat  down. 

There  was  silence  in  the  room,  complete  save  for  a 
slight  stirring,  the  sound  of  deep  breathing,  and  the 
fretting,  here  and  there,  of  a  hungry  child. 

Finally  at  the  back  of  the  room,  by  some  shifting  of 
his  pose,  by  thrusting  himself  forward  beyond  the 
relief  of  his  line,  an  Indian  made  his  presence  known. 
He  was  a  man  of  powerful  build,  of  nobly  moulded 
head;  his  hair  instead  of  having  been  braided,  had  been 
gathered  forward  into  two  loosely  twisted  strands;  his 
eyes  showed,  speculative  yet  keen,  his  mouth  was 
sharply  chiseled  though  withal  soft  in  its  lines,  and 
there  was  a  kindly  look  on  his  face  which  gave  some- 
how the  impression  of  the  morning  light  seen  upon  the 
rugged  side  of  a  great  mountain.  In  age  he  seemed  to 
be  between  the  young  and  the  old. 

As  he  made  his  presence  known  there  was  a  slow 
turning  of  the  heads  in  his  direction,  a  slight  tensing 
of  the  crowd.  The  old  chiefs  appeared  suddenly  eager 
and  filled  with  hope;  as  for  the  younger  men  and  the 
mixed-bloods  they  glanced  at  him  and  looked  away 
again,  as  if,  sighing  they  said:  "Another  on  the  wrong 
side.  Ah,  the  blind  old  men!" 

Then  he  spoke.  His  voice  was  deep,  very  virile, 
carefully  subdued  as  something  held  in  leash,  and  yet 
through  it  there  seemed  to  run  a  tremor,  a  quaver 
almost,  that  gave  an  impression  of  strange  intensity. 

I  repeat  his  words  with  elision. 

"I  am  not  one  of  the  old  men,"  he  said,  "and  yet  I 
can  easily  remember  the  time  when  this  valley,  these 


THE  INDIAN  OF  THE  RESERVATION    115 

mountains,  were  ours;  not  because  someone  had  given 
them  to  us,  but  because  we  had  taken  them  for  our- 
selves, because  our  arrows  flew  straightest,  our  spears 
reached  furthest,  our  horsemen  rode  fastest,  our  hearts 
were  bravest." 

Here  several  of  the  old  men  grunted  sympathetically. 
More  and  more  the  faces  of  the  throng  were  turned 
toward  the  speaker. 

"Then  everything  was  changed.  The  strangers  came 
like  a  flood,  like  our  rivers  in  the  spring;  they  surged 
over  us  and  they  left  us — as  we  are.  Perhaps  this  was 
the  will  of  the  Stranger-on-High,  we  cannot  tell.  .  .  . 
But  these  strangers  on  earth  were  not  altogether  un- 
kind to  us.  For  what  they  took  they  gave  a  sort  of 
compensation.  It  was  as  though  they  carried  away 
from  us  fat  buffaloes  and  then  handed  to  us  in  ex- 
change each  a  little  slice  of  their  meat.  They  deprived 
us  of  our  valley  and  our  mountains  but  instead  they 
gave  us  each  eighty  acres  of  the  land.  Then  they  sent 
more  strangers  with  chains  and  three-legged  toys  to 
measure  these  off  correctly  for  us.  They  gave  us  wire 
for  our  fences  but  only  enough  so  that  we  must  spend 
much  money  for  more.  They  gave  us  seed,  but  also 
so  little  that  we  were  driven  to  buy  more.  We  worked 
— some  of  us  with  the  chains  and  three-legged  toys — 
some  at  the  ditches,  every  way  we  could,  for  now  we 
needed  a  new  thing — something  of  which  we  had 
before  known  nothing,  money.  We  received  it — and 
then  we  spent  it." 

Again  faint  grunts  and  groans  encouraged  him. 

"For  we  cannot  keep  money  long.    We  are  children. 


ii6    THE  INDIAN  OF  THE  RESERVATION 

This  the  Great  Father  in  Washington  understands, 
and  also  that  our  ears  are  dull,  that  our  eyes  cannot 
read  his  written  words.  Therefore,  in  his  kindness, 
he  sends  to  us  this  man  to  speak  to  us  face  to  face." 
He  turned  his  slow  gaze  upon  the  inspector.  In  his 
eyes  was  the  look  of  mockery.  "We  have  listened  to 
his  words.  But  what  has  he  said  to  us?  'Give  up  the 
eighty  acres,  for  your  children  to  be  born,  give  up  the 
money  you  earned  and  spent,  give  up  your  homes;  as 
you  gave  up  this  valley  and  these  mountains.  The 
white  men  need  them.  Your  day  is  past.  But  I  am 
not  unkind.  Without  compensation  I  will  not  deprive 
you.  See,  I  will  give  you  even  a  little  more  money — ' " 
He  stopped  abruptly.  His  eyes  drooped,  his  shoulders, 
his  hands,  the  whole  man. 

A  strained  silence  had  fallen  upon  the  room, 
smothered  it.  From  it  escaped  the  faint  sighing  of  the 
younger  men.  The  chiefs  stiffened  as  they  sat. 

By  an  effort  the  speaker  seemed  to  rouse  himself. 
He  stared  strangely  about  the  room.  "There  was  a 
little  boy  once,"  he  said,  and  his  voice  had  grown 
dreamy,  slightly  high  in  pitch,  "and  this  little  boy  held 
his  hand  out  toward  the  flames,  nearer, — I  saw  it — 
the  fire  was  so  pretty,  so  warm,  it  danced,  purred, 
sparkled.  His  hand  crept  nearer,  nearer.  His  father 
watched  him.  At  the  last  moment  he  caught  him  and 
pulled  him  away.  The  child  cried  then,  he  struggled 
in  his  father's  arms,  he  pushed  away  from  him,  he 
fought.  Again  he  reached  out  toward  the  flame.  But 
finally  he  looked  up  into  the  man's  face  and  suddenly 
it  seemed  to  dawn  on  him  that,  although  he  could  not 


THE  INDIAN  OF  THE  RESERVATION    117 

understand,  this  was  indeed  his  father,  old  and  wise 
and  loving;  and  that  he,  by  comparison,  was  only  a 
little  misguided  child.  .  .  ."  The  strange,  vibrant 
voice  dwindled,  broke.  The  speaker  made  a  wide  ges- 
ture toward  the  attentive  inspector,  held  it  while  the 
interpreters  got  forth  in  English  his  last  sentence. 
Then  he  sank  back  into  his  old  place  against  the  wall; 
with  one  bent  hand  he  wiped  the  sweat  from  his  brow. 

A  faint  sound  of  muttering  passed  over  the  room; 
old  fierce  eyes  were  veiled,  young  keen  ones  peered  in- 
credulously. But  the  inspector  was  on  his  feet  on 
the  instant,  his  hand  outstretched  to  grasp  the  golden 
moment. 

"There  is  no  more  to  be  said,"  he  cried.  "Our  ears 
are  ringing  with  words.  Our  hearts  are  full.  I  have 
here,  prepared,  a  paper.  Let  those  who  for  their  own 
good  and  the  good  of  their  children  are  of  a  mind  to 
sell,  now  sign  it." 

Slowly,  amidst  moving  and  murmuring,  the  long 
paper,  in  the  hands  of  one  of  the  interpreters,  made  its 
deliberate  rounds.  Difficult  signatures  were  inscribed 
in  slow  succession.  Ancient,  unaccustomed  hands,  deft 
enough  with  spear  or  bow,  grasped  awkwardly  the 
pen  and  with  it  made  their  wavering  "mark." 

Some  there  were  of  the  old  men,  indeed  the  majority 
of  them,  who  wrapping  their  blankets  about  them 
arose,  and  shambling,  withdrew,  aloof  and  soundless. 

Like  a  shaken  kaleidoscope  the  council  broke  up. 

The  inspector  leaned  back  in  his  chair,  a  hand 
shielding  the  working  of  his  mouth.  His  eyes  searched 
the  variegated,  dissolving  throng.  The  stenographer, 


n8    THE  INDIAN  OF  THE  RESERVATION 

still  seated  and  playing  with  his  idle  pencil,  shot  him 
an  understanding  glance. 

Later  the  Half-breed,  standing  on  the  board  walk 
outside  the  trading  store,  a  box  of  crackers  in  one  hand, 
a  paper  containing  pickles  in  the  other,  was  lunching 
heartily.  Suddenly  he  shifted  everything  into  his  left 
hand  and  strode  down  into  the  road.  For  in  company 
with  his  wife  and  a  young  son  the  last  of  the  speakers 
was  passing. 

The  Half-breed's  extended  hand  grasped  the  Indian's. 

"I  thank  you  for  what  you  said,"  he  cried.  "It  was 
a  noble  thing  to  have  done.  You  faced  them  all;  the 
old  timers,  the  chiefs,  public  opinion,  prejudice.  And 
you  won.  It  was  a  brave  act." 

The  rugged,  illuminated  face  was  turned  to  him,  the 
deep  eyes  rested  squarely  upon  his.  "You  have  perhaps 
forgotten,"  he  said.  "You  are  younger  than  I  am  and 
too  you  have  been  for  a  long  time  with  the  whites — but 
I  remember  well  the  time  when  we  were  boys  and  our 
great  head-chief  Black  Star  used  to  sit  and  talk  with 
us.  Yes,  you  have  perhaps  forgotten,"  he  repeated, 
and  his  look,  just  touched  with  yearning,  rested  upon 
the  younger  man.  "But  I  remember — I  have  never 
forgotten  what  he  used  to  say  to  us.  'Be  brave,'  he 
would  tell  us.  'That  is  the  chief  thing  to  learn;  to  do 
what  each  one  believes  is  right,  to  speak  for  the  right, 
everywhere,  always.  To  be  fearless  of  tongues,  of 
persecution,  to  take  counsel  with  our  own  minds  and 
being  sure  to  speak  out  surely.  That,'  he  always  said 
to  us,  'and  that  only,  is  the  man's  part.'" 

— GRACE  COOLIDGE. 


VI 

THE  NIGHT  ATTACK 

WHEN  B  Company  marched  out  of  the  camp  for 
the  morning  skirmish  practice,  Tom  Kennedy  of  squad 
five  was  feeling  depressed.  His  corporal,  John  Wheeler, 
had  just  given  him  a  scolding,  and  now  wore  a  stern 
expression  on  his  youthful  yet  somehow  granite-like 
countenance.  Kennedy,  glancing  out  of  the  corner  of 
his  eye,  saw  and  interpreted  the  expression. 

He  was  a  thin,  pale  youth,  who  had  gone  from  high 
school  into  the  bank,  where  he  was  employed  in  a 
humble  capacity  as  clerk.  His  lack  of  physical  strength 
had  prevented  him  from  taking  part  in  school  athletics; 
the  impecuniosity  of  his  family  had  kept  him  from  a 
share  in  many  healthful,  boyish  activities.  He  had 
been  a  bookish  boy  and  had  shown  himself  quick  at 
figures;  many  of  his  classmates  envied  him  when,  after 
graduation,  a  subordinate  place  in  the  First  National 
Bank  had  been  given  him.  In  his  second  year  of  serv- 
ice there  he  was  promoted  to  a  clerkship;  and  when 
the  bank  announced  its  willingness  to  let  some  of  its 
employees  attend  the  military  training  camp,  Kennedy 
had  presented  himself  as  a  volunteer. 

Without  experience  in  the  handling  of  arms,  without 
natural  dexterity  and  without  the  self-confidence  that 
a  boy  derives  from  participation  in  sports  or  from  a 

119 


120  THE  NIGHT  ATTACK 

life  outdoors,  Kennedy  was  not  the  most  promising  of 
"rookies."  He  would  have  made  a  better  showing  in 
the  early  drills  perhaps  had  he  been  less  concerned 
with  the  dread  of  being  regarded  as  a  "dub."  What 
made  him  especially  self-conscious  was  the  fact  that 
his  corporal  was  the  son  of  the  president  of  the  First 
National  Bank.  It  seemed  to  Kennedy,  inexperienced 
youth  that  he  was,  that  his  whole  future  might  depend 
on  the  impression  he  made  on  the  president's  son. 

He  had  long  known  John  Wheeler  by  reputation. 
Wheeler  had  been  half  back  on  his  college  football 
team;  he  was  a  yachtsman  of  more  than  local  renown. 
As  corporal,  he  was  alert,  industrious  and  energetic; 
his  efficiency  caused  Kennedy  to  be  only  the  more 
keenly  aware  of  his  own  incompetence.  The  other 
men  in  the  tent  were  all  older  than  he,  all  better  edu- 
cated than  he,  and  without  in  the  least  intending  to 
make  him  feel  inferior  they  did  make  him  feel  so.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  they  thought  he  was  an  unassuming 
and  obliging  person,  who  had,  as  one  of  them  expressed 
it,  not  much  small  change  in  conversation. 

Now,  after  a  week  at  the  camp,  Kennedy  had  begun 
to  make  himself  a  nuisance  to  his  companions — the 
thing  that  he  had  most  dreaded  being.  He  had  caught 
cold,  and  had  coughed  at  frequent  intervals  through- 
out the  night;  he  had  buried  his  head  under  his  blankets 
and  tried  to  suppress  the  coughs,  and  he  had  blown  his 
nose  with  as  little  reverberation  as  possible,  but  he 
had,  nevertheless,  received  intimations  that  he  was 
disturbing  the  sleep  of  his  tent  mates.  In  the  morning 
one  of  them,  Morrison,  a  student  in  a  medical  school, 


THE  NIGHT  ATTACK  121 

offered  him  some  quinine  pills  and  advised  him  to 
report  at  sick  call.  But  Kennedy  had  resolved  not 
to  be  knocked  out  by  sickness;  he  thanked  Morrison 
for  the  pills  and  said  he  thought  he  should  get  through 
all  right.  His  feelings  were  hurt,  however,  when  after 
breakfast  Wheeler  said: 

"Come,  fellows,  let's  roll  up  the  tent;  if  we  don't 
give  the  sun  and  air  a  chance  in  here,  we'll  all  of  us  be 
sniffling." 

The  corporal  started  in  to  undo  the  guy  ropes  and 
then  exclaimed  wrathfully.  "Who's  the  man  that  tied 
these  ropes  in  hard  knots?  He's  a  landlubber,  all 
right." 

"I  should  say!"  remarked  Morrison,  who  was  at 
work  on  the  other  side  of  the  tent.  "I'm  not  guilty." 

"I'm  afraid  I  am."  Kennedy's  admission  was  the 
more  rueful  because  so  croaking. 

"A  man  who  can  only  tie  a  hard  knot  or  a  granny 
has  no  business  ever  to  touch  a  rope."  Wheeler  snapped 
out  the  words  while  his  fingers  worked  busily.  "I 
should  think  before  coming  to  a  camp  a  fellow  would 
learn  to  tie  a  few  knots." 

Kennedy  accepted  the  reproof  in  silence — if  a  sudden 
access  of  coughing  can  be  termed  silence.  He  was 
finding  it  hard  work  to  disengage  one  of  the  knots  of 
his  own  making;  presently  Wheeler,  having  freed  the 
other  ropes,  came  up  and  unceremoniously  took  pos- 
session of  that  at  which  Kennedy  was  picking. 

"Undo  your  pack,  take  the  rope  that's  fastened  to 
your  shelter  half  and  I'll  give  you  a  lesson,"  commanded 
Wheeler. 


122  THE  NIGHT  ATTACK 

To  the  object  lesson  in  tying  hitches,  half  hitches, 
slipknots  and  other  useful  knots  Kennedy  gave  close 
attention;  but  when  he  tried  to  do  what  he  had  just 
seen  his  instructor  do  he  became  confused. 

"Are  you  as  slow  as  that  counting  bills  in  the  bank?" 
Wheeler  asked.  "I  wonder  that  they  keep  you.  You 
don't  seem  to  have  learned  to  use  your  hands." 

He  snatched  the  rope  and  then  began  another  demon- 
stration for  the  mortified  youth;  Kennedy  could  not 
have  been  more  hurt  if  he  had  been  lashed  with  it. 
The  whistle  blew;  the  order,  "Fall  in!"  was  shouted 
at  the  head  of  the  street. 

"Quick,  now!  Do  up  your  pack!"  Wheeler  tossed 
back  the  rope,  and  Kennedy  made  a  dive  into  the 
tent  where  his  equipment  lay  scattered.  Hastily 
cramming  things  together,  he  discovered  when  he  had 
his  pack  rolled  up  and  fastened  that  he  had  left  out 
the  rubber  poncho.  In  the  street  the  men  were  all 
lined  up  at  attention;  he  alone  was  unready.  The 
first  sergeant  was  calling  the  roll;  the  corporals  were 
reporting:  "Squad  one?"  "All  present."  "Squad 
two?"  "All  present."  Kennedy  flung  on  his  pack 
and  crammed  his  poncho  under  his  mattress,  where 
it  would  not  be  visible.  "Squad  five?"  "Private 
Kennedy  absent."  "Squad  six?"  "All  present." 

Kennedy  fastened  his  canteen  to  his  belt,  caught 
up  his  rifle  and  took  his  place  in  the  rear  rank. 

He  heard  the  corporals  far  down  the  line  reporting, 
"All  present."  He  alone  had  been  delinquent.  Wheel- 
er's face  seemed  more  forbidding  than  ever. 

And  that  was  why,  as  the  company  marched  out 


THE  NIGHT  ATTACK  123 

for  the  day's  work,  Kennedy  felt  depressed.  He  was 
making  a  poor  showing;  he  had  won  the  outspoken  dis- 
approval of  the  man  whose  good  opinion  he  most 
heartily  desired.  Besides,  he  was  miserable  in  body; 
nose,  eyes  and  throat  were  all  inflamed,  the  pack  seemed 
heavier  than  it  ought  to  be,  and  there  was  no  early- 
morning  enthusiasm  in  his  legs.  A  glance  at  Wheeler's 
face  still  further  depressed  his  spirits.  He  had  never 
seen  the  corporal  look  so  black,  and  he  knew  it  was  all 
on  account  of  having  such  a  "dub"  in  the  squad! 

It  was  really  not  on  that  account  at  all.  What  was 
troubling  the  corporal  was  a  sense  of  his  severity  toward 
a  subordinate  who  seemed  to  be  doing  the  best  he  could. 
He  was  chagrined  that  he  had  been  so  sharp-tongued 
with  the  little  fellow;  he  had  got  into  the  habit  of  think- 
ing of  Kennedy  rather  pityingly  as  "the  little  fellow." 

All  the  long  morning  B  Company  was  put  through 
skirmish  drill;  the  sun  was  hot,  the  air  heavy;  with 
all  too  brief  intermissions  the  men  were  kept  at  work; 
running,  leaping,  casting  themselves  on  their  faces, 
and  pulling  the  trigger  and  throwing  the  bolt  of  their 
rifles.  Lying  prone,  with  neck  and  shoulder  muscles 
aching  under  the  weight  of  the  pack,  Kennedy  ex- 
perienced the  greatest  discomfort,  for  then  his  nose 
became  an  abomination  to  him.  And  at  those  times, 
snuffling,  coughing  and  gasping,  he  was  painfully 
aware  that  to  the  other  members  of  the  squad,  and 
particularly  to  the  corporal,  he  must  seem  nothing 
less  than  a  curse. 

The  luncheon  hour  afforded  him  a  little  rest.  But 
all  the  afternoon  there  was  drill  on  the  parade  ground; 


i24  THE  NIGHT  ATTACK 

and  at  supper  Kennedy  was  almost  too  tired  to  eat. 
His  cold  was  no  better,  his  cough  was  more  frequent 
and  racking,  and  he  feared  that  he  should  be  a  greater 
nuisance  to  his  tent  mates  than  on  the  preceding  night. 
After  supper  he  thought  he  should  go  into  the  town 
and  get  some  cough  drops;  but  that  was  a  mile  walk, 
and  before  undertaking  it  he  decided  to  stretch  himself 
out  on  his  bed  for  a  few  minutes'  rest.  Wheeler  came 
up  and  asked  him  how  he  was  feeling. 

"All  right,  if  only  I  don't  keep  you  fellows  awake," 
Kennedy  croaked,  grateful  for  the  question. 

"You  don't  sound  all  right.  I  should  think  you'd 
better  see  the  doctor." 

"Oh,  I  sound  worse  than  I  am." 

Wheeler  walked  away,  with  a  good-natured  laugh 
that  made  Kennedy  feel  better  than  a  cough  drop  could 
have  done.  It  showed  him  that  the  corporal  did  not 
have  an  unfriendly  attitude  toward  him,  and  it  stimu- 
lated his  resolve  to  let  the  corporal  see  that  he  did  not 
lack  staying  power. 

For  a  few  minutes  he  had  been  reclining  on  his  bed, 
when  he  was  horrified  to  hear  the  B  Company  whistle, 
followed  by  the  shout,  "Fall  in,  B  Company!"  When 
he  emerged  from  the  tent,  he  heard  the  second  order 
that  was  being  relayed  down  the  street,  "Fall  in  with 
the  rifle  and  the  full  pack!"  For  a  dismal  moment 
Kennedy  thought  of  going  up  to  the  captain  and  plead- 
ing unfitness  for  further  duty.  Then  he  gritted  his 
teeth,  slung  his  pack,  which  he  had  not  yet  unrolled, 
on  his  aching  shoulders  and  took  up  his  rifle.  The 
other  occupants  of  the  tent  made  their  appearance  on 


THE  NIGHT  ATTACK  125 

the  run,  uttering  maledictions  and  cries  of  grief  and 
wonderment.  Had  not  they  been  worked  hard  enough 
for  one  day!  This  kind  of  thing  was  an  outrage! 

When  the  company  was  lined  up,  Captain  Hughes 
said,  "B  Company  is  ordered  out  to  hold  a  section  of 
trench  against  an  expected  night  attack.  Squads 
right!" 

While  the  men  proceeded  at  route  step,  they  la- 
mented facetiously  the  ordeal  ahead  of  them.  Ken- 
nedy snuffled  and  shuffled  along,  trying  to  keep  his  head 
up  and  his  shoulders  from  drooping.  He  looked  ap- 
prehensively at  the  western  sky;  the  sun  had  gone 
down  in  a  black  cloud  wrack,  which  was  swarming 
higher  and  heavier.  The  sultry  air  was  suddenly 
fanned  by  a  cool  wind,  lightning  flashed  in  the  mass  of 
clouds,  and  thunder  pealed. 

"Going  to  have  a  little  real  war  this  evening,  I  guess," 
observed  Morrison. 

"The  storm  may  not  hit  us,"  said  Wheeler. 

"Everything  that  can  will  hit  us  to-day,"  replied 
Morrison. 

By  the  time  the  company  had  reached  the  trenches, 
which  were  dug  on  the  edge  of  a  wide  field,  it  was  grow- 
ing dark.  The  wind  was  blowing  hard  and  flung 
splashes  of  rain  into  the  men's  faces. 

Captain  Hughes  halted  his  command  and  called  the 
members  round  him. 

"This  is  the  section  that  you  are  to  defend,"  he 
said.  "You  see  it  consists  of  four  separate  front-line 
trenches,  each  just  long  enough  and  wide  enough  to 
accommodate  eight  men.  Each  front  trench  is  con- 


126  THE  NIGHT  ATTACK 

nected  with  the  second  line  of  trenches  by  a  short 
runway.  Behind  the  second  line  is  the  shelter,  or 
dugout,  for  those  who  are  not  on  duty  in  the  trenches. 
You  will  take  turns  in  holding  the  front  line;  each 
squad  will  be  relieved  every  fifteen  minutes.  The  rest 
of  you  will  keep  under  cover  in  the  shelter — under 
cover  from  the  enemy,  that  is."  There  was  an  un- 
certain ripple  of  laughter;  the  rain  was  beginning  now 
to  pour  down.  "At  what  hour  the  attack  may  develop 
I  can't  tell  you,"  continued  the  captain,  "but  it  will 
no  doubt  be  sometime  between  now  and  sunrise." 

In  the  shelter,  which  was  a  large  rectangular  pit 
six  feet  deep,  the  men  opened  their  packs  and  got  out 
their  ponchos — all  except  Kennedy,  who  stood  looking 
on  while  his  comrades  proceeded  to  protect  themselves 
against  the  now  pelting  rain. 

Wheeler,  poking  his  head  through  the  opening  in 
his  poncho,  saw  Kennedy  standing  thus. 

"Why  don't  you  get  out  your  poncho?"  he  asked. 

"I  forgot  to  put  it  in  my  pack." 

"That's  the  limit,  a  night  like  this.  You've  got  a 
frightful  cold,  too."  Wheeler  pulled  off  the  poncho 
that  he  had  just  put  on.  "Get  into  this  and  keep 
yourself  as  dry  as  you  can." 

"No,  I  wouldn't  think  of  taking  your " 

"You're  under  orders  now,  and  you'll  take  what 
your  corporal  tells  you."  Wheeler  thrust  the  rubber 
garment  over  his  subordinate's  head.  "There  you 
are;  I  don't  want  to  feel  responsible  for  your  having 
pneumonia." 

Then,  as  Captain  Hughes  called,  "Squad  leaders, 


THE  NIGHT  ATTACK  127 

gather  round!"  Wheeler  moved  away  to  receive  in- 
structions. 

Seating  himself  cross-legged,  Kennedy  arranged  the 
poncho  as  well  as  he  could  over  his  rifle.  The  rain 
came  down  in  sheets,  poured  from  the  brims  of  hats, 
formed  puddles  on  the  ground,  oozed  through  trousers 
and  boots  and  leggings.  By  the  occasional  lightning 
flashes  Kennedy  could  see  the  group  of  corporals  hold- 
ing conference  with  the  captain  near  by;  he  could  see 
the  huddled  forms  of  the  privates  like  himself,  the 
ponchos  shining  on  their  shoulders,  the  pools  glistening 
at  their  feet. 

In  a  few  moments  the  conference  broke  up;  then 
Captain  .Hughes  raised  his  voice  sharply. 

"Mr.  Wheeler,  where  is  your  poncho?" 

"I  haven't  got  it,  sir." 

"A  man  who  is  careless  about  himself  is  not  likely 
to  look  after  his  men,  and  that  is  an  officer's  first  duty. 
You  set  a  bad  example  to  the  members  of  your  squad, 
Mr.  Wheeler." 

"Yes,  sir." 

Wheeler  saluted  and  the  captain  turned  away  just 
as  Kennedy  came  forward.  The  corporal  gripped 
Kennedy's  wrist  and  held  him  fast,  then  led  him  in 
silence  back  to  his  place. 

"That's  all  right,"  he  whispered  in  Kennedy's  ear. 
"Don't  you  butt  in.  You'd  only  get  it  in  the  neck  if 
you  did." 

Kennedy,  believing  that  a  soldier's  first  duty  is  to 
obey,  did  not  persist;  he  saw  the  captain  leave  the 
shelter  and  join  a  group  of  officers  on  the  bank. 


128  THE  NIGHT  ATTACK 

"It  isn't  fair,  though,  for  you  to  take  the  blame,"  he 
began. 

"It's  of  no  importance,"  Wheeler  answered. 

A  few  moments  later  Kennedy  was  convinced  that 
the  corporal  was  mistaken.  While  Wheeler  was  talking 
to  another  member  of  the  squad,  Morrison  said  to 
Kennedy  in  a  low  voice: 

"I  guess  Wheeler's  chance  for  promotion  is  gone 
now.  They're  going  to  make  some  new  sergeants  to- 
morrow, and  I  thought  Wheeler  would  surely  be  one; 
but  I  guess  that  forgetting  his  poncho  has  queered  him 
with  the  captain.  He's  a  stickler  about  little  things." 

"It  doesn't  seem  fair,"  repeated  Kennedy,  as  if 
speaking  to  himself. 

Night  had  settled  down,  the  blackest  kind  of  night, 
when  the  first  platoon  was  ordered  into  the  advance 
trenches.  From  ambush  among  the  trees  behind  the 
shelter  searchlights  began  to  play  against  the  woods 
five  hundred  yards  away,  out  of  which  the  attack  was 
expected  to  come.  The  watchers  in  the  shelter  and  the 
trenches  remained  in  utter  darkness  while  the  stream- 
ing lines  of  rain  and  the  distant  trees  emerged  into 
view  under  the  sweeping  rays.  Back  and  forth  the 
searchlights  plied,  raking  the  whole  sector  of  forest 
that  bounded  the  field.  The  men  in  the  shelter,  who 
had  stood  up  to  see  what  the  searchlights  might  dis- 
close, soon  sat  down  again  and  wrapped  their  ponchos 
about  themselves  more  snugly.  The  minutes  passed; 
there  was  no  sound  except  that  made  by  the  determined, 
trampling  rain. 

Wheeler,  who  had  been  peering  over  the  top  of  the 


THE  NIGHT  ATTACK  129 

embankment,  came  and  seated  himself  between  Ken- 
nedy and  Morrison. 

"There's  one  thing,"  he  murmured.  "The  enemy 
are  getting  it  same  as  we  are." 

Morrison  grunted.  "How  do  you  know?  They're 
regulars,  and  maybe  they  haven't  left  their  barracks 
yet.  Maybe  they  won't  till  about  2  A.  M." 

"Don't  be  always  taking  the  joy  out  of  life,"  Wheeler 
entreated. 

At  last  came  the  turn  of  the  second  platoon.  They 
filed  out  through  the  runways  into  the  second-line  trench, 
where  they  waited  until  the  squads  of  the  first  platoon 
returned  from  the  sections  that  they  had  been  holding. 

"Second  platoon,  load!" 

In  the  pitch  blackness  it  was  not  an  easy  thing  to  do. 
Kennedy  got  his  clip  jammed  in  the  magazine  and 
for  a  few  moments  could  not  shove  it  down  or  pull  it 
out.  Then,  when  he  gave  a  final  desperate  wrench, 
out  it  came  with  a  jump,  slipped  through  his  fingers 
and  fell  somewhere  in  the  mud. 

"Lock  your  pieces.    Forward!" 

Kennedy  had  to  straighten  up  and  move  on  without 
having  found  his  cartridges.  When  he  was  in  his  place 
between  Wheeler  and  Morrison,  he  took  another  clip 
out  of  his  belt  and,  working  carefully  and  slowly,  in- 
serted it  in  the  magazine.  The  sound  of  others  working 
with  their  rifles  let  him  know  that  he  had  not  been 
the  only  one  to  get  into  difficulty. 

From  somewhere  behind,  Captain  Hughes  gave  in- 
structions: 

"  Keep  your  eyes  on  that  strip  of  woods.    Squad  on 


i3o  THE  NIGHT  ATTACK 

the  right,  take  the  sector  from  the  ravine  to  the  top 
of  the  knoll.  Next  squad,  the  sector  from  the  top  of 
the  knoll  to  that  tree  that  stands  out  in  front  of  the 
woods.  Next  squad,  the  sector  from  that  tree  to  the 
big  rock.  Fourth  squad,  the  sector  from  the  big  rock 
to  the  road.  If  anyone  comes  out  of  the  woods  in  your 
sector,  fire  on  him." 

"No  one  will  come,"  murmured  Morrison.  "Not 
for  five  or  six  hours  yet." 

But  they  all  stood  peering  intently  over  the  low  ridge 
of  earth  that  protected  the  top  of  the  trench  and  on 
which  their  rifles  rested.  Without  cessation  the  search- 
lights swept  back  and  forth  along  the  belt  of  woods; 
for  only  the  briefest  interval  was  any  section  left  in 
darkness.  Time  passed,  and  still  the  only  sound  was 
the  steady  drumming  of  the  rain. 

Then  suddenly  out  of  the  belt  of  woods  broke  a  line 
of  men  and  charged  forward.  Instantly  all  along  the 
advance  trenches  burst  jets  of  flame  and  the  vicious 
crackle  and  bang  of  the  rifles.  After  the  wearisome  and 
uncomfortable  vigil,  Kennedy  felt  warmed  into  excite- 
ment; he  got  off  three  shots  before  the  enemy  dropped 
to  the  ground  and  began  shooting  in  their  turn.  Then 
an  enemy  platoon  on  the  right  made  a  short  rush 
forward  and  dropped,  and  immediately  resumed  firing. 
By  platoon  rushes  the  line  advanced,  and  its  fire  seemed 
to  grow  steadier  and  stronger  as  it  drew  nearer.  In 
contrast,  the  fire  of  the  defenders  of  the  trenches 
weakened.  Only  three  men  in  Wheeler's  squad  were 
maintaining  a  steady  fire;  the  other  squads  displayed  a 
corresponding  feebleness  of  resistance. 


THE  NIGHT  ATTACK  131 

"Fire  faster,  men!"  cried  Captain  Hughes. 

But  fire  faster  they  did  not — and  could  not.  More 
than  half  of  them  were  now  having  the  trouble  in  load- 
ing their  rifles  that  Kennedy  had  experienced — and  was 
having  again.  Fumbling  in  the  darkness  with  the  wet, 
slippery  mechanism,  trying  hurriedly  to  slide  the 
cartridge  clips  into  place,  man  after  man  had  jammed 
his  magazine,  and  with  clumsy  fingers  was  frantically 
trying  to  adjust  it.  Meanwhile,  the  fire  of  the  enemy 
became  more  intense;  they  drew  nearer  and  nearer  by 
platoon  rushes;  and  at  last  Captain  Hughes  gave  the 
order  to  the  defenders  of  the  trenches,  "Cease  firing!" 

Then,  a  few  yards  away,  up  sprang  the  enemy  and, 
with  bayonets  fixed  and  a  wild  yell  that  at  the  last 
fizzled  out  into  laughter,  charged  down  on  the  trenches. 
They  stopped  on  the  edge  and  greeted  the  defenders 
derisively:  "Well,  boys,  all  dead,  ain't  you?"  "Fired 
as  if  you  were,  anyway."  "How'd  you  have  liked  it 
if  this  had  been  a  real  attack?"  "Any  of  you  boys 
want  to  have  a  little  bayonet  practice?" 

Captain  Hughes  gave  the  command  to  unload.  After 
"inspection  arms"  had  been  ordered,  the  captain 
pointed  the  moral  of  the  evening's  experience:  "You 
see,  it's  not  enough  to  be  good  daylight  soldiers — im- 
portant though  that  is.  You  have  got  to  be  able  to 
use  your  rifles  as  well  in  the  dark." 

B  Company  marched  back  to  camp;  Kennedy  sought 
an  audience  with  Captain  Hughes.  He  could  only  say 
in  a  husky  whisper: 

"  I  want  to  explain  about  Corporal  Wheeler's  poncho." 
He  had  to  stop  for  a  fit  of  coughing;  the  captain  bent 


i32  THE  NIGHT  ATTACK 

down  and  looked  at  him  sharply.  "He  took  off  his 
poncho  and  made  me  put  it  on — I'd  forgotten  mine. 
I  hope  it  won't  count  against  him." 

"What  do  you  mean  by  staying  on  duty  in  this 
condition?"  demanded  the  captain. 

"I  sound  worse  than  I  am." 

The  captain  grunted.  "Report  at  sick  call  to- 
morrow. I'll  remember  what  you  say  about  Wheeler. 
Good  night!" 

The  next  morning,  when  Kennedy  returned  from 
the  hospital  tent,  having  been  pronounced  fit  to 
continue  on  active  duty,  he  found  the  members  of 
squad  five  congratulating  Wheeler  on  his  promotion 
to  the  rank  of  sergeant. 

"Here's  the  fellow  that  saved  the  job  for  me." 
Wheeler  clapped  Kennedy's  shoulder.  "Captain 
Hughes  said  you  went  to  him  and  told  tales  out  of 
school." 

Kennedy  looked  pleased.  "I  heard  the  captain  tell 
you  that  you  mightn't  be  good  at  looking  after  your 
men,"  he  answered.  "I  thought  I'd  show  him." 

"Business,  just  business,"  said  Wheeler  with  a 
twinkle  in  his  eyes.  "Dad  would  never  forgive  me 
if  I  let  anything  happen  to  you.  I  feel  just  as  responsi- 
ble for  the  bank,  having  you  up  here,  as  he  does.  Now 
come  and  I'll  give  you  another  lesson  in  how  to  tie  a 
knot." 

— ARTHUR  STAN  WOOD  PIER. 


VII 
THE  PATH  OF  GLORY 

I 

IT  was  so  poor  a  place — a  bitten-off  morsel  "at  the 
beyond  end  of  nowhere" — that  when  a  February  gale 
came  driving  down  out  of  a  steel  sky  and  shut  up  the 
little  lane  road  and  covered  the  house  with  snow  a 
passer-by  might  have  mistaken  it  ;.ll,  peeping  through 
its  icy  fleece,  for  just  a  huddle  of  the  brown  bowlders  so 
common  to  the  country  thereabouts. 

And  even  when  there  was  no  snow  it  was  as  bad — 
worse,  almost,  Luke  thought.  When  everything  else 
went  brave  and  young  with  new  greenery;  when  the 
alders  were  laced  with  the  yellow  haze  of  leaf  bud,  and 
the  brooks  got  out  of  prison  again,  and  arbutus  and 
violet  and  buttercup  went  through  their  rotation  of 
bloom  up  in  the  rock  pastures  and  maple  bush — the 
farm  buildings  seemed  only  the  bleaker  and  barer. 

That  forlorn  unpainted  little  house,  with  its  sagging 
blinds!  It  squatted  there  through  the  year  like  a  one- 
eyed  beggar  without  a  friend — lost  in  its  venerable 
white-beard  winters,  or  contemplating  an  untidy  welter 
of  rusty  farm  machinery  through  the  summers. 

When  Luke  brought  his  one  scraggy  little  cow  up  the 
lane  he  always  turned  away  his  head.  The  place  made 
him  think  of  the  old  man  who  let  the  birds  build  nests  in 

133 


134  THE  PATH  OF  GLORY 

his  whiskers.  He  preferred,  instead,  to  look  at  the 
glories  of  Bald  Mountain  or  one  of  the  other  hills. 
There  was  nothing  wrong  with  the  back  drop  in  the 
home  stage-set;  it  was  only  home  itself  that  hurt  one's 
feelings. 

There  was  no  cheer  inside,  either.  The  sagging  old 
floors,  though  scrubbed  and  spotless,  were  uncarpeted; 
the  furniture  meager.  A  pine  table,  a  few  old  chairs,  a 
shabby  scratched  settle  covered  by  a  thin  horse  blanket 
as  innocent  of  nap  as  a  Mexican  hairless — these  for  es- 
sentials; and  for  embellishment  a  shadeless  glass  lamp 
on  the  table,  about  six-candle  power,  where  you  might 
make  shift  to  read  the  Biweekly — times  when  there  was 
enough  money  to  have  a  Biweekly — if  you  were  so 
minded;  and  window  shelves  full  of  corn  and  tomato 
cans,  still  wearing  their  horticultural  labels,  where 
scrawny  one-legged  geraniums  and  yellowing  coleus  and 
begonia  contrived  an  existence  of  sorts. 

And  then,  of  course,  the  mantelpiece  with  the  black- 
edged  funeral  notice  and  shiny  coffin  plate,  relics  of 
Grampaw  Peel's  taking-off;  and  the  pink  mug  with  the 
purple  pansy  and  "Woodstock,  N.  Y.,"  on  it;  the  pho- 
tograph of  a  forgotten  cousin  in  Iowa,  with  long  an- 
tennae-shaped mustaches;  the  Bible  with  the  little  china 
knobs  on  the  corners;  and  the  pile  of  medicine  testi- 
monials and  seed  catalogues — all  these  contributed 
something. 

If  it  was  not  a  beautiful  place  within,  it  was,  also,  not 
even  a  pleasant  place  spiritually.  What  with  the  open 
door  into  his  father's  room,  whence  you  could  hear  the 
thin  frettings  made  by  the  man  who  had  lain  these  ten 


THE  PATH  OF  GLORY  135 

years  with  chronic  rheumatism,  and  the  untuneful 
whistlings  of  whittling  Tom,  the  big  brother,  the  shapely 
supple  giant  whose  mind  had  never  grown  since  the  fall 
from  the  barn  room  when  he  was  eight  years  old,  and 
the  acrid  complaints  of  the  tall  gaunt  mother,  stepping 
about  getting  their  inadequate  supper,  in  her  gray 
wrapper,  with  the  ugly  little  blue  shawl  pinned  round 
her  shoulders,  it  was  as  bad  a  place  as  you  might  find 
in  a  year's  journeying  for  anyone  to  keep  bright  and 
" chirk  up"  in. 

Not  that  anyone  in  particular  expected  "them  poor 
Hayneses"  to  keep  bright  or  "chirk  up."  As  far  back 
as  he  could  remember,  Luke  had  realized  that  the  hand 
of  God  was  laid  on  his  family.  Dragging  his  bad  leg  up 
the  hill  pastures  after  the  cow,  day  in  and  day  out,  he 
had  evolved  a  sort  of  patient  philosophy  about  it.  It 
was  just  inevitable,  like  a  lot  of  things  known  in  that 
rock-ribbed  and  fatalistic  region — as  immutably  decreed 
by  heaven  as  foreordination  and  the  damnation  of  un- 
baptized  babes.  The  Hayneses  had  just  "got  it  hard." 

Yet  there  were  times,  now  he  was  come  to  a  gangling 
fourteen,  when  Luke's  philosophy  threatened  to  fail 
him.  It  wasn't  fair — so  it  wasn't!  They  weren't  bad 
folks;  they'd  done  nothing  wicked.  His  mother  worked 
like  a  dog — "no  fair  for  her,"  any  way  you  looked  at  it. 
There  were  times  when  the  boy  drank  in  bitterly  every 
detail  of  the  miserable  place  he  called  home  and  knew 
the  depths  of  an  utter  despair. 

If  there  was  only  some  way  to  better  it  all!  But 
there  was  no  chance.  His  father  had  been  a  failure  at 
everything  he  touched  in  early  life,  and  now  he  was  a 


i36  THE  PATH  OF  GLORY 

hopeless  invalid.  Tom  was  an  idiot — or  almost — and 
himself  a  cripple.  And  Nat!  Well,  Nat  "wa'n't 
willin" — not  that  one  should  blame  him.  Times  like 
these,  a  lump  like  a  roc's  egg  would  rise  in  the 
boy's  throat.  He  had  to  spit — and  spit  hard — to 
conquer  it. 

"If  we  hain't  the  gosh-awfulest  lot!"  he  would  gulp. 

To-day,  as  he  came  up  the  lane,  June  was  in  the  land. 
She'd  done  her  best  to  be  kind  to  the  farm.  All  the  old 
heterogeneous  rosebushes  in  the  woodyard  and  front 
"lawn"  were  piled  with  fragrant  bloom.  Usually  Luke 
would  have  lingered  to  sniff  it  all,  but  he  saw  only  one 
thing  now  with  a  sudden  skipping  at  his  heart — an  auto- 
mobile standing  beside  the  front  porch. 

It  was  not  the  type  of  car  to  cause  cardiac  disturbance 
in  a  connoisseur.  It  was,  in  fact,  of  an  early  vintage, 
high-set,  chunky,  brassily  aesthetic,  and  given  to  asth- 
matic choking  on  occasion;  but  Luke  did  not  know  this. 
He  knew  only  that  it  spelled  luxury  beyond  all  dreams. 
It  belonged,  in  short,  to  his  Uncle  Clem  Cheesman,  the 
rich  butcher  who  lived  in  the  village  twelve  miles  away; 
and  its  presence  here  signaled  the  fact  that  Uncle  Clem 
and  Aunt  Mollie  had  come  to  pay  one  of  their  detestable 
quarterly  visits  to  their  poor  relations.  They  had  come 
while  he  was  out,  and  Maw  was  in  there  now,  bearing 
it  all  alone. 

Luke  limped  into  the  house  hastily.  He  was  not  mis- 
taken. There  was  a  company  air  in  the  room,  a  stiff 
hostile-polite  taint  in  the  atmosphere.  Three  visitors 
sat  in  the  kitchen,  and  a  large  hamper,  its  contents 
partly  disgorged,  stood  on  the  table.  Luke  knew  that 


THE  PATH  OF  GLORY  137 

it   contained   gifts — the  hateful,   merciful,   nauseating 
charity  of  the  better-off. 

Aunt  Mollie  was  speaking  as  he  entered — a  large, 
high-colored,  pouter-pigeon-chested  woman,  with  a 
great  many  rings  with  bright  stones,  and  a  nodding 
pink  plume  in  her  hat.  She  was  holding  up  a  bifurcated 
crimson  garment,  and  greeted  Luke  absently. 

"Three  pair  o'  them  underdrawers,  Delia — an'  not  a 
break  in  one  of  'em!  I  sez,  as  soon  as  I  see  Clem  layin* 
'em  aside  this  spring,  'Them  things'll  be  jest  right  fur 
Delia's  Jere,  layin'  there  with  the  rheumatiz.'  They 
may  come  a  little  loose;  but,  of  course,  you  can't  be 
choicey.  I've  b'en  at  Clem  fur  five  years  to  buy  him 
union  suits;  but  he's  always  b'en  so  stuck  on  red  flannen. 
But  now  he's  got  two  aut'mobiles,  countin'  the  new 
delivery,  I  guess  he's  gotta  be  more  tony;  so  he  made  out 
to  spare  'em.  And  now  that  hat,  Delia — it  ain't  a  mite 
wore  out,  an'  fur  all  you'll  need  one  it's  plenty  good 
enough.  I  only  had  it  two  years  and  I  guess  folks  won't 
remember;  an'  what  if  they  do — they  all  know  you  get 
my  things.  Same  way  with  that  collarette.  It's  a 
little  moth-eaten,  but  it  won't  matter  fur  you.  .  .  . 
The  gray  suit  you  can  easy  cut  down  fur  Luke, 
there—" 

She  droned  on,  the  other  woman  making  dry  auto- 
matic sounds  of  assent.  She  looked  cool — Maw — Luke 
thought;  but  she  wasn't.  Not  by  a  darn  sight!  There 
was  a  spot  of  pink  in  each  cheek  and  she  stared  hard 
every  little  bit  at  Grampaw  Peel's  funeral  plate  on  the 
mantel.  Luke  knew  what  she  was  thinking  of — poor 
Maw!  She  was  burning  in  a  fire  of  her  own  lighting. 


i38  THE  PATH  OF  GLORY 

She  had  brought  it  all  on  herself — on  the  whole  lot  of 
them. 

Years  ago  she  had  been  just  like  Aunt  Mollie.  The 
daughters  of  a  prosperous  village  carpenter,  they  had 
shared  beads,  beaux  and  bangles  until  Maw,  in  a  mo- 
ment's madness,  had  chucked  it  all  away  to  marry  poor 
Paw.  Now  she  had  made  her  bed,  she  must  lie  in  it. 
Must  sit  and  say  "Thank  you!"  for  Aunt  Mollie's 
leavings,  precious  scraps  she  dared  not  refuse — Maw, 
who  had  a  pride  as  fierce  and  keen  as  any!  It  was 
devilish!  Oh,  it  was  kind  of  Aunt  Mollie  to  give;  it  was 
the  taking  that  came  so  bitter  hard.  And  then  they 
weren't  genteel  about  their  giving.  There  was  always 
that  air  of  superiority,  that  conscious  patronage,  as  now, 
when  Uncle  Clem,  breaking  off  his  conversation  with 
the  invalid  in  the  next  room  about  the  price  of  mutton 
on  the  hoof  and  the  chances  of  the  Democrats'  getting 
in  again,  stopped  fiddling  with  his  thick  plated  watch 
chain  and  grinned  across  at  big  Tom  to  fling  his  un- 
deviating  flower  of  wit : 

"Runnin'  all  to  beef,  hain't  ye,  Tom,  boy?  Come  on 
down  to  the  market  an'  we'll  git  some  A  i  sirloins  outen 
ye,  anyway.  Do  your  folks  that  much  good." 

It  was  things  like  this  that  made  Luke  want  to  burn, 
poison,  or  shoot  Uncle  Clem.  He  was  not  a  bad  man, 
Uncle  Clem — a  thick  sandy  chunk  of  a  fellow,  given  to 
bright  neckties  and  a  jocosity  that  took  no  account  of 
feelings.  Shaped  a  little  like  a  log,  he  was — back  of 
his  head  and  back  of  his  neck — all  of  a  width.  Little 
lively  green  eyes  and  bristling  red  mustaches.  A  com- 
plexion a  society  bud  might  have  envied.  Why  was  it  a 


THE  PATH  OF  GLORY  139 

butcher  got  so  pink  and  white  and  sleek?  Pork,  that's 
what  Uncle  Clem  resembled,  Luke  thought — a  nice, 
smooth,  pale-fleshed  pig,  ready  to  be  skinned. 

His  turn  next!  When  crops  and  politics  failed  and  the 
joke  at  poor  Tom — Tom  always  giggled  inordinately  at 
it,  too — had  come  off,  there  was  sure  to  be  the  one  about 
himself  and  the  lame  duck  next.  To  divert  himself  of 
bored  expectation,  Luke  turned  to  stare  at  his  cousin, 
S'norta. 

S'norta,  sitting  quietly  in  a  chair  across  the  room,  was 
seldom  known  to  be  emotional.  Indeed,  there  were 
times  when  Luke  wondered  whether  she  had  not  died 
in  her  chair.  One  had  that  feeling  about  S'norta,  so 
motionless  was  she,  so  uncompromising  of  glance.  She 
was  very  prosperous-looking,  as  became  the  heiress  to 
the  Cheesman  meat  business — a  fat  little  girl  of  twelve, 
dressed  with  a  profusion  of  ruffles,  glass  pearls,  gilt 
buckles,  and  thick  tawny  curls  that  might  have  come 
straight  from  the  sausage  hook  in  her  papa's  shop. 

S'norta  had  been  consecrated  early  in  life  to  the  un- 
usual. Even  her  name  was  not  ordinary.  Her  roman- 
tic mother,  immersed  in  the  prenatal  period  in  the  hair- 
lifting  adventures  of  one  Senorita  Carmena,  could  think 
of  no  lovelier  appellation  when  her  darling  came  than 
the  first  portion  of  that  sloe-eyed  and  restless  lady's 
title,  which  she  conceived  to  be  baptismal;  and  in  due 
course  she  had  conferred  it,  together  with  her  own  pro- 
nunciation, on  her  child.  A  bold  man  stopping  in  at 
Uncle  Clem's  market,  as  Luke  knew,  had  once  tried  to 
pronounce  and  expound  the  cognomen  in  a  very  different 
fashion;  but  he  had  been  hustled  unceremoniously  from 


140  THE  PATH  OF  GLORY 

the  place,  and  S'norta  remained  in  undisturbed  pos- 
session of  her  honors. 

Now  Luke  was  recalled  from  his  contemplation  by  his 
uncle's  voice  again.  A  lull  had  fallen  and  out  of  it  broke 
the  question  Luke  always  dreaded. 

"Nat,  now!"  said  Uncle  Clem,  leaning  forward,  his 
thick  fingers  clutching  his  fat  knees.  "You  ain't  had 
any  news  of  him  since  quite  a  while  ago,  have  you?" 
The  wit  that  was  so  preponderable  a  feature  or"  Uncle 
Clem's  nature  bubbled  to  the  surface.  "Dunno  but 
he's  landed  in  jail  a  spell  back  and  can't  git  out  again!" 
The  lively  little  eyes  twinkled  appreciatively. 

Nobody  answered.  It  set  Maw's  mouth  in  a  thin, 
hard  line.  You  wouldn't  get  a  rise  out  of  old  Maw  with 
such  tactics — Maw,  who  believed  in  Nat,  soul  and  body. 
Into  Luke's  mind  flashed  suddenly  a  formless  half 
prayer:  "Don't  let  'em  nag  her  now — make  'em  talk 
other  things!" 

The  Lord,  in  the  guise  of  Aunt  Mollie,  answered  him. 
For  once,  Nat  and  Nat's  character  and  failings  did  not 
hold  her.  She  drew  a  deep  breath  and  voiced  something 
that  claimed  her  interest: 

"Well,  Delia,  I  see  you  wasn't  out  at  the  Bisbee's 
funeral.  Though  I  don't  s'pose  anyone  really  expected 
you,  knowin'  how  things  goes  with  you.  Time  was, 
when  you  was  a  girl,  you  counted  in  as  big  as  any  and 
traveled  with  the  best;  but  now" — she  paused  deli- 
cately, and  coughed  politely  with  an  appreciative  glance 
round  the  poor  room — "they  ain't  anyone  hereabouts 
but's  talkin'  about  it.  My  land,  it  was  swell !  I  couldn't 
ask  no  better  for  my  own.  Fourteen  cabs,  and  the 


THE  PATH  OF  GLORY  141 

hearse  sent  over  from  Rockville — all  pale  gray,  with 
mottled  gray  horses.    It  was  what  I  call  tasty. 

"Matty  wasn't  what  you'd  call  well-off — not  as  lucky 
as  some  I  could  mention;  but  she  certainly  went  off 
grand !  The  whole  Methodist  choir  was  out,  with  three 
numbers  in  broken  time;  and  her  cousin's  brother-in-law 
from  out  West — some  kind  of  bishop — to  preach. 
Honest,  it  was  one  of  the  grandest  sermons  I  ever  heard ! 
Wasn't  it,  Clem?" 

Uncle  Clem  cleared  his  throat  thoughtfully. 

"Humiliatin'! — that's  what  I'd  call  it.  A  strong 
maur'l  sermon  all  round.  A  man  couldn't  hear  it  'thout 
bein'  humiliated  more  ways'n  one."  He  was  back  at 
the  watch-chain  again. 

"It's  a  pity  you  couldn't  of  gone,  Delia — you  an* 
Matty  always  was  so  intimate  too.  You  certainly 
missed  a  grand  treat,  I  can  tell  you;  though,  if  you 
hadn't  the  right  clothes " 

"Well,  I  haven't,"  Maw  spoke  dryly.  "I  don't  go  no- 
wheres,  as  you  know — not  even  church." 

"I  s'pose  not.  Time  was  it  was  different,  though, 
Delia.  Ain't  nobody  but  talks  how  bad  off  you  are. 
Ann  Chester  said  she  seen  you  in  town  a  while  back  and 
wouldn't  of  knowed  it  was  you  if  it  hadn't  of  b'en  you 
was  wearin'  my  old  brown  cape,  an'  she  reconnized  it. 
Her  an'  me  got  'em  both  alike  to  the  same  store  in  Rock- 
ville. You  was  so  changed,  she  said  she  couldn't  hardly 
believe  it  was  you  at  all." 

"Sometimes  I  wonder  myself  if  it  is,"  said  Maw 
grimly. 

"Well,  's  I  was  sayin',  it  was  a  grand  funeral.    None 


i42  THE  PATH  OF  GLORY 

better!  They  even  had  engraved  invites,  over  a  hun- 
dred printed — and  they  had  folks  from  all  over  the 
state.  They  give  Clem,  here,  the  contract  fur  the 
supper  meat " 

"The  best  of  everything!"  Uncle  Clem  broke  in. 
"None  o'  your  cheap  graft.  Gimme  a  free  hand.  Jim 
Bisbee  tole  me  himself.  'I  want  the  best  ye  got,'  he 
sez;  an'  I  give  it.  Spring  lamb  and  prime  ribs,  fancy 
hotel  style " 

"An'  Em  Carson  baked  the  cakes  fur  'em,  sixteen  of 
'em;  an'  Dickison  the  undertaker's  tellin'  all  over  they 
got  the  best  quality  shroud  he  carries.  Well,  you'll 
find  it  all  in  the  Biweekly,  under  Death's  Busy  Sickle. 
Jim  Bisbee  shore  set  a  store  by  Matty  oncet  she  was 
dead.  It  was  a  grand  affair,  Delia.  Not  but  what 
we've  had  some  good  ones  in  our  time  too." 

It  was  Aunt  Mollie's  turn  to  stare  pridefully  at  the 
Peel  plate  on  the  chimney  shelf. 

"A  thing  like  that  sets  a  family  up,  sorta." 

Uncle  Clem  had  taken  out  a  fat  black  cigar  with  a 
red-white-and-blue  band.  He  bit  off  the  end  and 
alternately  thrust  it  between  his  lips  or  felt  of  its  thick- 
ness with  a  fondling  thumb  and  finger.  Luke,  watching, 
felt  a  sudden  compassion  for  the  cigar.  It  looked  so 
harried. 

"I  always  say,"  Aunt  Mollie  droned  on,  "a  person 
shows  up  what  he  really  is  at  the  last — what  him  and 
his  family  stands  fur.  It's  what  kind  of  a  funeral  you've 
got  that  counts — who  comes  out  an'  all.  An'  that  was 
true  with  Matty.  There  wa'n't  a  soul  worth  namin' 
that  wasn't  out  to  hers." 


THE  PATH  OF  GLORY  143 

How  Aunt  Molly  could  gouge — even  amicably! 
And  funerals!  What  a  subject,  even  in  a  countryside 
where  a  funeral  is  a  social  event  and  the  manner  of  its 
furniture  marks  a  definite  social  status!  Would  they 
never  go?  But  it  seemed  at  last  they  would.  Incredi- 
bly, somehow,  they  were  taking  their  leave,  Aunt 
Mollie  kissing  Maw  good-by,  with  the  usual  remark 
about  "hopin5  the  things  would  help  some,"  and  about 
being  "glad  to  spare  somethin'  from  my  great  plenty." 

She  and  Senorita  were  presently  packed  into  the 
car  and  Tom  had  gone  out  to  goggle  at  Uncle  Clem 
cranking  up,  the  cold  cigar  still  between  his  lips.  Now 
they  were  off — choking  and  snorting  their  way  out  of 
the  wood-yard  and  down  the  lane.  Aunt  Mollie's  pink 
feather  streamed  into  the  breeze  like  a  pennon  of 
riumph. 

Maw  was  standing  by  the  stove,  a  queer  look  in  her 
eyes;  so  queer  that  Luke  didn't  speak  at  once.  He 
limped  over  to  finger  the  spilled  treasures  on  the  table. 

"Gee!  Lookit,  Maw!  More  o'  them  prunes  we 
liked  so;  an'  a  bag  o*  early  peaches;  an'  fresh  soup 
meat  fur  a  week — " 

A  queer  trembling  had  seized  his  mother.  She  was 
so  white  he  was  frightened. 

"Did  you  sense  what  it  meant,  Luke — what  Aunt 
Molly  told  us  about  Matty  Bisbee?  We  was  left  out 
deliberate — that's  what  it  meant.  Her  an'  me  that  was 
raised  together  an'  went  to  school  and  picnics  all  our 
girlhood  together!  Never  could  see  one  'thout  the 
other  when  we  was  growin'  up — Jim  Bisbee  knew  that 


144  THE  PATH  OF  GLORY 

too!  But" — her  voice  wavered  miserably — "I  didn't 
get  no  invite  to  her  funeral.  I  don't  count  no  more, 
Lukey.  None  of  us,  anywheres.  .  .  .  We're  jest  them 
poor  Gawd-forsaken  Hayneses." 

She  slipped  down  suddenly  into  a  chair  and  covered 
her  face,  her  thin  shoulders  shaking.  Luke  went  and 
touched  her  awkwardly.  Times  he  would  have  liked 
to  put  his  arms  round  Maw — now  more  than  ever; 
but  he  didn't  dare. 

"Don't  take  on,  Maw!    Don't!" 

"Who's  takin'  on?"  She  lifted  a  fierce,  sallow,  tear- 
wet  face.  "Hain't  no  use  makin'  a  fuss.  All's  left's  to 
work — to  work,  an'  die  after  a  while." 

"I  hate  'em!    Uncle  Clem  an'  her,  I  mean." 

"They  mean  kindness — their  way."  But  her  tears 
started  afresh. 

"I  hate  'em!"  Luke's  voice  grew  shriller.  "I'd  like 
—I'd  like—  Oh,  damn 'em!" 

"Don't  swear,  boy!" 

It  was  Tom  who  broke  in  on  them.  "It's  a  letter 
from  Rural  Free  Delivery.  He  jest  dropped  it." 

He  came  up,  grinning,  with  the  missive.  The 
mother's  fingers  closed  on  it  nervously. 

"From  Nat,  mebbe — he  ain't  wrote  in  months." 

But  it  wasn't  from  Nat.  It  was  a  bill  for  a  last 
payment  on  the  "new  harrow,"  brought  three  years 
before. 

II 

One  of  the  earliest  memories  Luke  could  recall  was 
the  big  blurred  impression  of  Nat's  face  bending  over 


THE  PATH  OF  GLORY  145 

his  crib  of  an  evening.  At  first  flat,  indefinite,  remote 
as  the  moon,  it  grew  with  time  to  more  human,  intimate 
proportions.  It  became  the  face  of  "brother,"  the 
black-haired,  blue-eyed  big  boy  who  rollicked  on  the 
floor  with  or  danced  him  on  his  knee  to — 

This  is  the  way  the  lady  rides! 
Tritty-trot-trot;  tritty-trot-trot ! 

Or  who,  returning  from  school  and  meeting  his  faltering 
feet  in  the  lane,  would  toss  him  up  on  his  shoulder  and 
canter  him  home  with  mad,  merry  scamperings. 

Not  that  school  and  Nat  ever  had  much  in  common. 
Even  as  a  little  shaver  Luke  had  realized  that,  Nat  was 
the  family  wilding,  the  migratory  bird  that  yearned 
for  other  climes.  There  were  the  times  when  he  sulked 
long  days  by  the  fire,  and  the  springs  and  autumns 
when  he  played  an  unending  round  of  hookey.  There 
were  the  days  when  he  was  sent  home  from  school  in 
disgrace;  when  protesting  notes,  and  sometimes  even 
teacher,  arrived. 

"It's  not  that  Nat's  a  bad  boy,  Mrs.  Haynes,"  he 
remembered  one  teacher  saying;  "but  he's  so  active, 
so  full  of  restless  animal  spirits.  How  are  we  ever 
going  to  tame  him?" 

Maw  didn't  know  the  answer — that  was  sure.  She 
loved  Nat  best — Luke  had  guessed  it  long  ago,  by  the 
tone  of  her  voice  when  she  spoke  to  him,  by  the  touch 
of  her  hand  on  his  head,  or  the  size  of  his  apple  turnover, 
so  much  bigger  than  the  others'.  Maw  must  have  built 
heavily  on  her  hopes  of  Nat  those  days — her  one  per- 


146  THE  PATH  OF  GLORY 

feet  child.  She  was  so  proud  of  him!  In  the  face  of 
all  ominous  prediction  she  would  fling  her  head  high. 

"My  Nat's  a  Peel!"  she  would  say.  "Can't  never 
tell  how  he'll  turn  out." 

The  farmers  thereabouts  thought  they  could  tell  her. 
Nat  was  into  one  scrape  after  another — nothing  espe- 
cially wicked;  but  a  compound  of  the  bubbling  mischief 
in  a  too  ardent  life — robbed  orchards,  broken  windows, 
practical  jokes,  Halloween  jinks,  vagrant  whimsies  of 
an  active  imagination. 

It  was  just  that  Nat's  quarters  were  too  small  for 
him,  chiefly.  Even  he  realized  this  presently.  Luke 
would  never  forget  the  sloppy  March  morning  when 
Nat  went  away.  He  was  wakened  by  a  flare  of  candle 
in  the  room  he  shared  with  his  brothers.  Tom,  the 
twelve-year-old,  lay  sound  asleep;  but  Nat,  the  big 
man  of  fifteen,  was  up,  dressed,  bending  over  something 
he  was  writing  on  a  paper  at  the  bureau.  There  was  a 
fat  little  bundle  beside  him,  done  up  in  a  blue-and- 
white  bandanna. 

Day  was  still  far  off.  The  window  showed  black; 
there  was  the  sound  of  a  thaw  running  off  the  eaves; 
the  whitewashed  wall  was  painted  with  grotesque  leap- 
ing shadows  by  the  candle  flame.  At  the  first  murmur, 
Nat  had  come  and  put  his  arms  about  him. 

"Don't  ye  holler,  little  un;  don't  ye  do  it!  'Tain't 
nothin' — on'y  Natty's  goin'  away  a  spell;  quite  a  spell, 
little  un.  Now  kiss  Natty.  .  .  .  That's  right!  .  .  . 
An'  you  lay  still  there  an'  don't  holler.  An'  listen 
here,  too:  Natty's  goin'  to  bring  ye  somethin' — a  grand 
red  ball,  mebbe — if  you're  good.  You  wait  an'  see!'* 


THE  PATH  OF  GLORY  147 

But  Natty  hadn't  brought  the  ball.  Two  years  had 
passed  without  a  scrap  of  news  of  him;  and  then — he 
was  back.  Slipped  into  the  village  on  a  freighter  at  dusk 
one  evening.  A  forlorn  scarecrow  Nat  was;  so  tattered 
of  garment,  so  smeared  of  coal  dust,  you  scarcely  knew 
him.  So  full  of  strange  sophistications,  too,  and  new 
trails  of  thought — so  oddly  rich  of  experience.  He 
gave  them  his  story.  The  tale  of  an  exigent  life  in  a 
great  city;  a  piecework  life  made  of  such  flotsam  labors 
as  he  could  pick  up,  of  spells  of  loafing,  of  odd  incredi- 
ble associates,  of  months  tagging  a  circus,  picking  up  a 
task  here  and  there,  of  long  journeyings  through  the 
country,  "riding  the  bumpers" — even  of  alms  asked 
at  back  doors! 

"Oh,  not  a  tramp,  Nat!" 

The  hurt  had  quivered  all  through  Maw. 

But  Nat  only  laughed. 

"Jiminy  Christmas,  it  was  great!" 

He  had  thrown  back  his  head,  laughing.  That  was 
Nat  all  through — sipping  of  life  generously,  no  matter 
in  what  form. 

He  had  stayed  just  three  weeks.  He  had  spent 
them  chiefly  defeating  Maw's  plans  to  keep  him. 
Wanderlust  kept  him  longer  the  next  time.  That  was 
eight  years  ago.  Since  then  he  had  been  back  home 
three  times.  Never  so  poor  and  shabby  as  at  first — 
indeed,  Nat's  wanderings  had  prospered  more  or  less — 
but  still  remote,  somewhat  mysterious,  touched  by 
new  habits  of  life,  new  ways  of  speech. 

The  countryside,  remembering  the  manner  of  his 
first  return,  shook  its  head  darkly.  A  tramp — a 


148  THE  PATH  OF  GLORY 

burglar,  even.  God  knew  what!  When,  on  his  third 
visit  home,  he  brought  an  air  of  extreme  opulence, 
plenty  of  money,  and  a  sartorial  perfection  undreamed 
of  locally,  the  heads  wagged  even  harder.  A  gambler 
probably;  a  ne'er-do-well  certainly;  and  one  to  break 
his  mother's  heart  in  the  end. 

But  none  of  this  was  true,  as  Luke  knew.  It  was  just 
that  Nat  hated  farming;  that  he  liked  to  rove  and  take 
a  floater's  fortune.  He  had  a  taste  for  the  mechanical 
and  followed  incomprehensible  quests.  San  Francisco 
had  known  him;  the  big  races  at  Cincinnati;  the 
hangars  at  Mineola.  He  was  restless — Nat;  but  he 
was  respectable.  No  one  could  look  into  his  merry 
blue  eyes  and  not  know  it.  If  his  labors  were  uncertain 
and  sporadic,  and  his  address  that  of  a  nomad,  it  all 
sufficed,  at  least  for  himself. 

If  at  times  Luke  felt  a  stirring  doubt  that  Nat  was  not 
acquitting  himself  of  his  family  duty,  he  quenched  it 
fiercely.  Nat  was  different.  He  was  born  free;  you 
could  tell  it  in  his  talk,  in  his  way  of  thinking.  He  was 
like  an  eagle  and  hated  to  be  bound  by  earthly  ties. 
He  cared  for  them  all  in  his  own  way.  Times  when 
he  was  back  he  helped  Maw  all  he  could.  If  he  brought 
money  he  gave  of  it  freely;  if  he  had  none,  just  the  look 
of  his  eye  or  the  ready  jest  on  his  lip  helped. 

Upstairs  in  a  drawer  of  the  old  pine  bureau  lay  some 
of  Nat's  discarded  clothing — incredible  garments  to 
Luke.  The  lame  boy,  going  to  them  sometimes,  fin- 
gered them,  pondering,  reconstructing  for  himself  the 
fabric  of  Nat's  adventures,  his  life.  The  ice-cream 
pants  of  a  by-gone  day;  the  pointed,  shriveled  yellow 


THE  PATH  OF  GLORY  149 

Oxfords!  the  silk-front  shirt;  the  odd  cuff  link  or  stud — 
they  were  like  a  genie-in-a-bottle,  these  poor  clothes! 
You  rubbed  them  and  a  whole  Arabian  Night's  dream 
unfurled  from  them. 

And  Nat  lived  it  all!  But  people — dull  stodgy 
people  like  Uncle  Clem  and  Aunt  Mollie,  and  old  Beck- 
onridge  down  at  the  store,  and  a  dozen  others — these 
criticized  him  for  not  "workin'  reg'lar"  and  giving  a 
full  account  of  himself. 

Luke,  thinking  of  all  this,  would  flush  with  impotent 
anger. 

"Oh,  let  'em  talk,  though!  He'll  show  'em  some 
day!  They  dunno  Nat.  He'll  do  somethin'  big  fur 
us  all  some  day." 

Ill 

Midsummer  came  to  trim  the  old  farm  with  her 
wreaths.  It  was  the  time  Luke  loved  best  of  all — the 
long,  sweet,  loam-scented  evenings  with  Maw  and  Tom 
on  the  old  porch;  and  sometimes — when  there  was  no 
fog — Paw's  cot,  wheeled  out  in  the  stillness.  But  Maw 
was  not  herself  this  summer.  Something  had  fretted 
and  eaten  into  her  heart  like  an  acid  ever  since 
Aunt  Mollie's  visit  and  the  news  of  Matty  Bisbee's 
funeral. 

When,  one  by  one,  the  early  summer  festivities  of 
the  neighborhood  had  slipped  by,  with  no  inclusion 
of  the  Hayneses,  she  had  fallen  to  brooding  deeply, — 
to  feeling  more  bitterly  than  ever  the  ignominy  and 
wretchedness  of  their  position. 

Luke  tried  to  comfort  her;  to  point  out  that  this 


150  THE  PATH  OF  GLORY 

summer  was  like  any  other;  that  they  "never  had 
mattered  much  to  folks."  But  Maw  continued  to 
brood;  to  allude  vaguely  and  insistently  to  "the  straw 
that  broke  the  camel's  back."  It  was  bitter  hard  to 
have  Maw  like  that — home  was  bad  enough,  anyway. 
Sometimes  on  clear,  soft  nights,  when  the  moon  came 
out  all  splendid  and  the  "peepers"  sang  so  plaintively 
in  the  Hollow,  the  boy's  heart  would  fill  and  grow 
enormous  in  his  chest  with  the  intolerable  sadness  he 
felt. 

Then  Maw's  mood  lifted — pierced  by  a  ray  of  heav- 
enly sunlight — for  Nat  came  home! 

Luke  saw  him  first — heard  him,  rather;  for  Nat 
came  up  the  lane — oh,  miraculous! — driving  a  motor 
car.  It  was  not  a  car  like  Uncle  Clem's — not  even  a 
step-brother  to  it.  It  was  low  and  almost  noiseless,  and 
shaped  like  one  of  those  queer  torpedoes  they  were 
fighting  with  across  the  water.  It  was  colored  a  soft 
dust-gray  and  trimmed  with  nickel;  and,  huge  and 
powerful  though  it  was,  it  swung  to  a  mere  touch  of 
Nat's  hand. 

Nat  stood  before  them,  clad  in  black  leather  Norfolk 
and  visored  cap  and  leggings. 

"Look  like  a  fancy  brand  of  chauffeur,  don't  I?" 
he  laughed,  with  the  easy  resumption  of  a  long-broken 
relation  that  was  so  characteristically  Nat. 

But  Nat  was  not  a  chauffeur.  Something  much 
bigger  and  grander.  The  news  he  brought  them  on 
top  of  it  all  took  their  breaths  away.  Nat  was  a  special 
demonstrator,  out  on  a  brand-new  high-class  job  for  a 
house  handling  a  special  line  of  high-priced  goods. 


THE  PATH  OF  GLORY  151 

And  he  was  to  go  to  Europe  in  another  week — did  they 
get  it  straight?  Europe!  Jiminy!  He  and  another 
fellow  were  taking  cars  over  to  France  and  England. 

No;  they  didn't  quite  get  it.  They  could  not  grasp 
its  significance,  but  clung  humbly,  instead,  to  the  mere 
glorious  fact  of  his  presence. 

He  stayed  two  days  and  a  night;  and  summer  was 
never  lovelier.  Maw  was  like  a  girl,  and  there  was 
such  a  killing  of  pullets  and  extravagance  with  new- 
laid  eggs  as  they  had  never  known  before.  At  the  last 
he  gave  them  all  presents. 

"Tell  the  truth,"  he  laughed,  "I'm  stony  broke. 
'Tisn't  mine,  all  this  stuff  you  see.  I  got  some  kale  in 
advance — not  much,  but  enough  to  swing  me;  but  of 
course,  the  outfit's  the  company's.  But  I'll  tell  you 
one  thing:  I'm  going  to  bring  some  long  green  home 
with  me,  you  can  bet!  And  when  I  do' — Nat  had 
given  Maw  a  prodigious  nudge  in  the  ribs — "when  I 
do — I  ain't  goin'  to  stay  an  old  bachelor  forever!  Do 
you  get  that?" 

Maw's  smile  had  faded  for  a  moment.  But  the  pres- 
ents were  fine — a  new  knife  for  Tom,  a  book  for  Luke, 
and  twenty  whole  round  dollars  for  Maw,  enough  to 
pay  that  old  grocery  bill  down  at  Beckonridge's  and 
Paw's  new  invoice  of  patent  medicine. 

They  all  stood  on  the  porch  and  watched  him  as 
far  as  they  could  see;  and  Maw's  black  mood  didn't 
return  for  a  whole  week. 

Evenings  now  they  had  something  different  to  talk 
about — journeys  in  seagoing  craft;  foreign  countries 
and  the  progress  of  the  "Ee-ropean"  war,  and  Nat's 


152  THE  PATH  OF  GLORY 

likelihood — he  had  laughed  at  this — of  touching  even 
its  fringe.  They  worked  it  all  up  from  the  boiler-plate 
war  news  in  the  Biweekly  and  Luke's  school  geography. 
Yes;  for  a  little  space  the  blackness  was  lifted. 

Then  came  the  August  morning  when  Paw  died. 
This  was  an  unexpected  and  unsettling  contingency. 
One  doesn't  look  for  a  "chronic's"  doing  anything 
so  unscheduled  and  foreign  to  routine;  but  Paw  spoiled 
all  precedent.  They  found  him  that  morning  with 
his  heart  quite  still,  and  Luke  knew  they  stood  in  the 
presence  of  imminent  tragedy. 

It's  all  very  well  to  peck  along,  hand-to-mouth 
fashion.  You  can  manage  a  living  of  sorts;  and  farm 
produce,  even  scanty,  unskillfully  contrived,  and  the 
charity  of  relatives,  and  the  patience  of  tradesmen, 
will  see  you  through.  But  a  funeral — that's  different! 
Undertaker — that  means  money.  Was  it  possible 
that  the  sordid  epic  of  their  lives  must  be  capped  by 
the  crowning  insult,  the  Poormaster  and  the  Pauper's 
Field?  If  only  poor  Paw  could  have  waited  a  little 
before  he  claimed  the  spotlight — until  prices  fell  a 
little  or  Nat  got  back  with  that  "long  green"! 

Maw  swallowed  her  bitter  pill. 

She  went  to  see  Uncle  Clem  and  ask!  And  Uncle 
Clem  was  kind. 

"He'll  buy  a  casket — he's  willin'  fur  that — an'  send 
a  wreath  and  pay  fur  notices,  an'  even  half  on  a  buryin' 
lot;  but  he  said  he  couldn't  do  no  more.  The  high  cost 
has  hit  him  too.  .  .  .  An'  where  are  we  to  git  the 
rest?  He  said — at  the  last — it  might  be  better  all 
round  fur  us  to  take  what  Ellick  Flick  would  gimme 


THE  PATH  OF  GLORY  153 

outen  the  Poor  Fund — "  Maw  hadn't  been  able  to 
go  on  for  a  spell. 

A  pauper's  burial  for  Paw!  Surely  Maw  would 
manage  better  than  that!  She  tried  to  find  a  better 
way  that  very  night. 

"This  farm's  mortgaged  to  the  neck;  but  I  calculate 
Ben  Travis  won't  care  if  I'm  a  mind  to  put  Paw  in  the 
south  field.  It  hain't  no  mortal  good  fur  anything 
else,  anyhow;  an'  he  can  lay  there  if  we  want.  It's  a 
real  pleasant  place.  An'  I  can  git  the  preacher  myself — 
I'll  give  him  the  rest  o'  the  broilers;  an'  they's  seasoned 
hickory  plankin'  in  the  lean-to.  Tom,  you  come  along 
with  me." 

All  night  Luke  had  lain  and  listened  to  the  sound  of 
big  Tom's  saw  and  hammer.  Tom  was  real  handy  if 
you  told  him  how — and  Maw  would  be  showing  him 
just  how  to  shape  it  all  out.  Each  hammer  blow  struck 
deep  on  the  boy's  heart. 

Maw  lined  the  home-made  box  herself  with  soft  old 
quilts,  and  washed  and  dressed  her  dead  herself  in  his 
faded  outlawed  wedding  clothes.  And  on  a  morning 
soft  and  sweet,  with  a  hint  of  rain  in  the  air,  they  rode 
down  in  the  farm  wagon  to  the  south  field  together — 
Paw  and  Maw  and  Luke — with  big  Tom  walking  be- 
side the  aged  knobby  horse's  head. 

Abel  Gazzam,  a  neighbor,  had  seen  to  the  grave; 
and  in  due  course  the  little  cavalcade  reached  the 
appointed  spot  inside  the  snake  fence — a  quiet  place 
in  a  corner,  under  a  graybeard  elm.  As  Maw  had 
said,  it  was  "a  pleasant  place  for  Paw  to  lay  in." 

There  were  some  old  neighbors  out  in  their  own  rigs, 


iS4  THE  PATH  OF  GLORY 

and  Uncle  Clem  had  brought  his  family  up  in  his  car, 
with  a  proper  wreath;  and  Reverend  Kearns  came  up 
and — declining  all  lien  on  the  broilers — read  the  burial 
service,  and  spoke  a  little  about  poor  Paw.  But  it 
wasn't  a  funeral,  no  how.  No  supper;  no  condolence; 
no  viewing  "the  remains" — not  even  a  handshake! 
Maw  didn't  even  look  at  her  old  friends,  riding  back 
home  between  Tom  and  Luke,  with  her  head  fiercely 
high  in  the  air. 

A  dull  depression  settled  on  Luke's  heart.  It  was 
all  up  with  the  Hayneses  now.  They  had  saved  Paw 
from  charity  with  their  home-made  burial;  but  what 
had  it  availed?  They  might  as  well  have  gone  the 
whole  figure.  Everybody  knew!  There  wasn't  any 
comeback  for  a  thing  like  this.  They  were  just  no- 
bodies— the  social  pariahs  of  the  district. 

IV 

Somehow,  after  the  fashion  of  other  years,  they  got 
their  meager  crops  in — turnips,  potatoes  and  Hubbard 
squashes  put  up  in  the  vegetable  cellar;  oats  cradled; 
corn  husked;  the  buckwheat  ready  for  the  mill;  even 
Tom's  crooked  furrows  for  the  spring  sowings  made. 
Somehow,  Maw  helping  like  a  man  and  Tom  obeying 
like  a  docile  child,  they  took  toll  of  their  summer.  And 
suddenly  September  was  at  their  heels — and  then  the 
equinox. 

It  seemed  to  Luke  that  it  had  never  rained  so  much 
before.  Brown  vapor  rose  eternally  from  the  valley 
flats;  the  hilltops  lay  lost  entirely  in  clotted  murk.  By 


THE  PATH  OF  GLORY  155 

periods  hard  rains,  like  showers  of  steel  darts,  beat  on 
the  soaking  earth.  Gypsy  gales  of  wind  went  ricochet- 
ing among  the  farm  buildings,  setting  the  shingles  to 
snapping  and  singing;  the  windows  moaned  and  rattled. 
The  sourest  weather  the  boy  could  remember! 

And  on  the  worst  day  of  all  they  got  the  news.  Out 
of  the  mail  box  in  the  lane  Luke  got  it — going  down 
under  an  old  rubber  cape  in  a  steady  blinding  pour.  It 
got  all  damp — the  letter,  foreign  postmark,  stamp  and 
all — by  the  time  he  put  it  into  Maw's  hand. 

It  was  a  double  letter — or  so  one  judged,  first  open- 
ing it.  There  was  another  inside,  complete,  sealed,  and 
addressed  in  Nat's  hand;  but  one  must  read  the  paper 
inclosed  with  it  first — that  was  obvious.  It  was  just 
a  strip,  queer,  official  looking,  with  a  few  lines  typed 
upon  it  and  a  black  heading  that  sprang  out  at  one 
strangely.  They  read  it  together — or  tried  to.  At  first 
they  got  no  sense  from  it.  Paris — from  clear  oflF  in 
France — and  then  the  words  below — and  Maw's  name 
at  the  top,  just  like  the  address  on  the  newspaper: 

MRS.  JERE  HAYNES, 

Stony  Brook,  New  York. 

It  was  for  Maw  all  right.  Then  quite  suddenly  the 
words  came  clear  through  the  blur: 

MRS.  JERE  HAYNES, 

Stony  Brook,  New  York. 

Dear  Madam:  We  regret  to  inform  you  that  the  of- 
ficial communique  for  September  sixth  contains  the  tid- 


i  $6  THE  PATH  OF  GLORY 

ings  that  the  writer  of  the  enclosed  letter,  Nathaniel 
Haynes,  of  Stony  Brook,  New  York,  U.  S.  A.,  was  killed 
while  on  duty  as  an  ambulance  driver  in  the  Sector  of 
Verdun,  and  has  been  buried  in  that  region.  Further 
details  will  follow. 


The  American  Ambulance,  Paris. 

Even  when  she  realized,  Maw  never  cried  out.  She 
sat  wetting  her  lips  oddly,  looking  at  the  words  that  had 
come  like  evil  birds  across  the  wide  spaces  of  earth.  It 
was  Luke  who  remembered  the  other  letter: 

"My  dear  kind  folks — Father,  Mother  and  Brothers: 
I  guess  I  dare  call  you  that  when  I  get  far  enough  away 
from  you.  Perhaps  you  won't  mind  when  I  tell  you  my 
news. 

"Well  we  came  over  from  England  last  Thursday  and 
struck  into  our  contract  here.  Things  was  going  pretty 
good;  but  you  might  guess  yours  truly  couldn't  stand 
the  dead  end  of  things.  I  bet  Maw's  guessed  already. 
Well  sir  it's  that  roving  streak  in  me  I  guess.  Never 
could  stick  to  nothing  steady.  It  got  me  bad  when  I 
got  here  any  how. 

"To  cut  it  short  I  throwed  up  my  job  with  the  firm 
yesterday  and  have  volunteered  as  an  Ambulance 
driver.  Nothing  but  glory;  but  I'm  going  to  like  it  fine! 
They're  short-handed  anyhow  and  a  fellow  likes  to  help 
what  he  can.  Wish  I  could  send  a  little  money;  but  it 
took  all  I  had  to  outfit  me.  Had  to  cough  up  eight 
bucks  for  a  suit  of  underclothes.  What  do  you  know 
about  that  ? 


THE  PATH  OF  GLORY  157 

"You  can  write  me  in  care  of  the  Ambulance,  Paris. 

"Now  Maw  don't  worry!  I'm  not  going  to  fight.  I 
did  try  to  get  into  the  Foreign  Legion  but  had  no  chance. 
I'm  all  right.  Think  of  me  as  a  nice  little  Red  Cross  boy 
and  the  Wise  Willie  on  the  gas  wagon.  And  won't  I 
have  the  hot  stuff  to  make  old  Luke's  eyes  pop  out! 
Hope  Paw's  legs  are  better.  And  Maw  have  a  kiss  on 
me.  Mebbe  you  folks  think  I  don't  appreciate  you.  If 
I  was  any  good  at  writing  I'd  tell  you  different. 

"Your  Son  and  Brother, 
"NAT  HAYNES." 

The  worst  of  it  all  was  about  Maw's  not  crying — 
just  sitting  there  staring  at  the  fire,  or  where  the  fire  had 
been  when  the  wood  had  died  out  of  neglect.  It's  not  in 
reason  that  a  woman  shouldn't  cry,  Luke  felt.  He  tried 
some  words  of  comfort : 

"He's  safe,  anyhow,  Maw — 'member  that!  That's  a 
whole  lot  too.  Didn't  always  know  that,  times  he  was 
rollin'  round  so  over  here.  You  worried  a  whole  lot 
about  him,  you  know." 

But  Maw  didn't  answer.  She  seldom  spoke  at  all — 
moved  about  as  little  as  possible.  When  she  had  put 
out  food  for  him  and  Tom  she  always  went  back  to  her 
corner  and  stared  into  the  fire.  Luke  had  to  bring  a 
plate  to  her  and  coax  her  to  eat.  Even  the  day  Uncle 
Clem  and  Aunt  Mollie  came  up  she  did  not  notice  them. 
Only  once  she  spoke  of  Nat  to  Luke. 

"You  loved  him  the  most,  didn't  ye,  Maw?"  he 
asked  timidly  one  dreary  evening. 

She  answered  in  a  sort  of  dull  surprise. 


i$8  THE  PATH  OF  GLORY 

"Why,  lad,  he  was  my  first!"  she  said;  and  after  a 
bit,  as  though  to  herself:  "His  head  was  that  round  and 
shiny  when  he  was  a  little  fellow  it  was  like  to  a  little 
round  apple.  I  mind,  before  he  ever  come,  I  bought  me 
a  cap  fur  him  over  to  Rockville,  with  a  blue  bow  onto  it. 
He  looked  awful  smart  an'  pretty  in  it." 

Sometimes  in  the  night  Luke,  sleeping  ill  and  think- 
ing long,  lay  and  listened  for  possible  sounds  from 
Maw's  room.  Perhaps  she  cried  in  the  nights.  If  she 
only  would — it  would  help  break  the  tension  for  them 
all.  But  he  never  heard  anything  but  the  rain — stead- 
ily, miserably  beating  on  the  sodden  shingles  over- 
head. 

It  was  only  Luke  who  watched  the  mail  box  now. 
One  morning  his  journey  to  it  bore  fruit.  No  sting  any 
longer;  no  fear  in  the  thick  foreign  letter  he  carried. 

"It'll  tell  ye  all's  to  it,  I  bet!"  he  said  eagerly. 

Maw  seemed  scarcely  interested.  It  was  Luke  who 
broke  the  seal  and  read  it  aloud. 

It  was  written  from  the  Ambulance  Headquarters,  in 
Paris — written  by  a  man  of  rare  insight,  of  fine  and 
delicate  perception.  All  that  Nat's  family  might  have 
wished  to  learn  he  sought  to  tell  them.  He  had  himself 
investigated  Nat's  story  and  he  gave  it  all  fully  and 
freely.  He  spoke  in  praise  of  Nat;  of  his  friendly  associ- 
ations with  the  Ambulance  men;  of  his  good  nature  and 
cheerful  spirits;  his  popularity  and  ready  willingness  to 
serve.  People,  one  felt,  had  loved  Nat  over  there. 

He  wrote  of  the  preliminary  duties  in  Paris,  the  prep- 
arations— of  Nat's  final  going  to  join  one  of  the  three 


THE  PATH  OF  GLORY  159 

sections  working  round  Verdun.  It  wasn't  easy  work 
that  waited  for  Nat  there.  It  was  a  stiff  contract  guid- 
ing the  little  ambulance  over  the  shell-rutted  roads, 
with  deftness  and  precision,  to  those  distant  dressing 
stations  where  the  hurt  soldiers  waited  for  him.  It 
was  a  picture  that  thrilled  Luke  and  made  his  pulses 
tingle — the  blackness  of  the  nights;  the  rumble  of 
moving  artillery  and  troops;  the  flash  of  starlights;  the 
distant  crackling  of  rifle  fire;  the  steady  thunder  of 
heavy  guns. 

And  the  shells!  It  was  mighty  close  theyv swept  to  a 
fellow,  whistling,  shrieking,  low  overhead;  falling  to  tear 
out  great  gouges  in  the  earth.  It  was  enough  to  wreck 
one's  nerve  utterly;  but  the  fellows  that  drove  were  all 
nerve.  Just  part  of  the  day's  work  to  them!  And  that 
was  Nat  too.  Nat  hadn't  known  what  fear  was — he'd 
eaten  it  alive.  The  adventurer  in  him  had  gone  out  to 
meet  it  joyously. 

Nat  was  only  on  his  third  trip  when  tragedy  had  come 
to  him.  He  and  a  companion  were  seeking  a  dressing 
station  in  the  cellar  of  a  little  ruined  house  in  an  obscure 
French  village,  when  a  shell  had  burst  right  at  their  feet, 
so  to  speak.  That  was  all.  Simple  as  that.  Nat  was 
dead  instantly  and  his  companion — oh,  Nat  was  really 
the  lucky  one.  .  .  . 

Luke  had  to  stop  for  a  little  time.  One  couldn't  go  on 
at  once  before  a  thing  like  that.  .  .  .  When  he  did,  it 
was  to  leave  behind  the  darkness,  the  shell-torn  houses, 
the  bruised  earth,  the  racked  and  mutilated  humans. . . . 
Reading  on,  it  was  like  emerging  from  Hades  into  a 
great  Peace. 


160  THE  PATH  OF  GLORY 

"I  wish  it  were  possible  to  convey  to  you,  my  dear 
Mrs.  Haynes,  some  impression  of  the  moving  and 
beautiful  ceremony  with  which  your  son  was  laid  to 
rest  on  the  morning  of  September  ninth,  in  the  little 
village  of  Aucourt.  Imagine  a  warm,  sunny,  late- 
summer  day,  and  a  village  street  sloping  up  a  hillside, 
filled  with  soldiers  in  faded,  dusty  blue,  and  American 
Ambulance  drivers  in  khaki. 

"In  the  open  door  of  one  of  the  houses,  the  front  of 
which  was  covered  with  the  tri-color  of  France,  the 
coffin  was  placed,  wrapped  in  a  great  French  flag,  and 
covered  with  flowers  and  wreaths  sent  by  the  various 
American  sections.  At  the  head  a  small  American  flag 
was  placed,  on  which  was  pinned  the  Croix  de  Guerre — 
a  gold  star  on  a  red-and-green  ribbon — a  tribute  from 
the  army  general  to  the  boy  who  gave  his  life  for 
France. 

"A  priest,  with  six  soldier  attendants,  led  the  proces- 
sion from  the  courtyard.  Six  more  soldiers  bore  the  cof- 
fin, the  Americans  and  representatives  of  the  army 
branches  following,  bearing  wreaths.  After  these  came 
the  General  of  the  Army  Corps,  with  a  group  of  officers, 
and  a  detachment  of  soldiers  with  arms  reversed.  At 
the  foot  of  the  hill  a  second  detachment  fell  in  and  joined 
them.  .  .  . 

"The  scene  was  unforgettable,  beautiful  and  impres- 
sive. In  the  little  church  a  choir  of  soldiers  sang  and  a 
soldier-priest  played  the  organ,  while  the  Chaplain  of 
the  Army  Division  held  the  burial  service.  The  chap- 
lain's sermon  I  have  asked  to  have  reproduced  and 
sent  to  you,  together  with  other  effects  of  your  son's. . . . 


THE  PATH  OF  GLORY  161 

"The  chaplain  spoke  most  beautifully  and  at  length, 
telling  very  tenderly  what  it  meant  to  the  French  people 
that  an  American  should  give  his  life  while  trying  to 
help  them  in  the  hour  of  their  extremity.  The  name  of 
this  chaplain  is  Henri  Deligny,  Aumonier  Militaire, 
Ambulance  16-27,  Sector  112;  and  he  was  assisted  by 
the  permanent  cure  of  the  little  church,  Abbe  Blondelle, 
who  wishes  me  to  assure  you  that  he  will  guard  most 
reverently  your  son's  grave,  and  be  there  to  receive  you 
when  the  day  may  come  that  you  shall  wish  to  visit  it. 

"After  leaving  the  church  the  procession  marched  to 
the  military  cemetery,  where  your  son's  body  was  laid 
beside  the  hundreds  of  others  who  have  died  for  France. 
Both  the  lieutenant  and  general  here  paid  tributes  of  ap- 
preciation, which  I  will  have  sent  to  you.  The  general, 
various  officers  of  the  army,  and  ambulance  assisted  in 
the  last  rites.  .  .  . 

"I  have  brought  back  and  will  send  you  the  Croix  de 
Guerre.  .  .  ." 

Oh,  but  you  couldn't  read  any  further — for  the  great 
lump  of  pride  in  your  throat,  the  thick  mist  of  tears  in 
your  eyes.  A  sob  escaped  the  boy.  He  looked  over  at 
Maw  and  saw  the  miraculous.  Maw  was  awake  at  last 
and  crying — a  new-fledged  pulsating  Maw  emerged  from 
the  brown  chrysalis  of  her  sorrows. 

"Oh,  Maw!  ...  Our  Nat!  ...  All  that— that- 
funeral!  .  .  .  Some  funeral,  Maw!"  The  boy  choked. 

"My  Nat!"  Maw  was  saying.  "Buried  like  a  king! 
.  .  .  Like  a  King  o'  France!"  She  clasped  her  hands 
tightly. 


162  THE  PATH  OF  GLORY 

It  was  like  some  beautiful  fantasy.  A  Haynes — the 
despised  and  rejected  of  earth — borne  to  his  last  home 
with  such  pomp  and  ceremony! 

"There  never  was  nothin'  like  it  heard  of  round  here, 
Maw.  ...  If  folks  could  only  know — " 

She  lifted  her  head  as  at  a  challenge. 

"Why,  they're  goin'  to  know,  Luke — for  I'm  goin'  to 
tell  'em.  Folks  that  have  talked  behind  Nat's  back — 
folks  that  have  pitied  us — when  they  see  this — like  a 
King  o'  France!"  she  repeated  softly.  "I'm  goin'  down 
to  town  to-day,  Luke." 


It  was  dusk  when  Maw  came  back;  dusk  of  a  clear 
day,  with  a  rosy  sunset  off  behind  the  hills.  Luke 
opened  the  door  for  her  and  he  saw  that  she  had  brought 
some  of  the  sun  along  in  with  her — its  colors  in  her 
worn  face;  its  peace  in  her  eyes.  She  was  the  same, 
yet  somehow  new.  Even  the  tilt  of  her  crazy  old 
bonnet  could  not  detract  from  a  strange  new  dignity 
that  clothed  her. 

She  did  not  speak  at  once,  going  over  to  warm  her 
gloveless  hands  at  the  stove,  and  staring  up  at  the 
Grampaw  Peel  plate;  then: 

"When  it  comes — my  Nat's  medal — it's  goin'  to  set 
right  up  here,  'stead  o'  this  old  thing — an'  the  letters 
and  the  sermons  in  my  shell  box  I  got  on  my  weddin' 
trip.  .  .  .  Lawyer  Ritchie  told  me  to-day  what  it 
means,  the  name  o'  that  medal — Cross  o'  War!  It's 
a  decoration  fur  soldiers  and  earned  by  bravery." 


THE  PATH  OF  GLORY  163 

She  paused;  then  broke  out  suddenly: 

"I  b'en  a  fool,  settin'  here  grievin'.  My  Nat  was  a 
hero,  an'  I  never  knew  it!  ...  A  hero's  folks  hadn't 
ought  to  cry.  It's  a  thing  too  big  for  that.  Come  here, 
you  little  Luke!  Maw  hain't  b'en  real  good  to  you  an' 
Tommy  lately.  You're  gittin'  all  white  an'  peaked. 
Too  much  frettin'  'bout  Nat.  You  an'  me's  got  to 
stop  it,  I  tell  you.  Folks  round  here  ain't  goin'  to  let 
us  fret " 

"Folks!  Maw!"  The  words  burst  from  the  boy's 
heart.  "Did  they  find  out?  .  .  .  You  showed  it  to 
'em?  Uncle  Clem " 

Maw  sniffed. 

"Clem!  Oh,  he  was  real  took  aback;  but  he  don't 
count  in  on  this — not  big  enough."  Then  triumph 
hastened  her  story.  "It's  the  big  ones  that's  mixin' 
into  this,  Lukey.  Seems  like  they'd  heard  somethin' 
a  spell  back  in  one  o'  the  county  papers,  an'  we  didn't 
know.  .  .  .  Anyhow,  when  I  first  got  into  town  I  met 
Judge  Geer.  He  had  me  right  into  his  office  in  Ma- 
sonic Hall,  'fore  I  could  git  my  breath  almost — had 
me  settin'  in  his  private  room,  an'  sent  his  stenugifer 
out  fur  a  cup  o'  cawfee  fur  me.  He  had  me  give  him 
the  letter  to  read,  an'  asked  dare  he  make  some  copies. 
The  stenugifer  took  'em  like  lightnin',  right  there. 

"The  judge  had  a  hard  time  of  it,  coughin'  an* 
blowin'  over  that  letter.  He's  goin'  to  send  some 
copies  to  the  New  York  papers  right  off.  He  took  me 
acrost  the  hall  and  interduced  me  to  Lawyer  Ritchie. 
Lawyer  Ritchie,  he  read  the  letter  too.  'A  hero!* 
they  called  Nat;  an'  me  'A  hero's  mother!' 


164  THE  PATH  OF  GLORY 

"We  ain't  goin'  to  forgit  this,  Mis'  Haynes,'  Lawyer 
Ritchie  said.  'This  here  whole  town's  proud  o'  your 
Nat/  .  .  .  My  land!  I  couldn't  sense  it  all!  ... 
Me,  Delia  Haynes,  gettin'  her  hand  wrung,  'count  o' 
anything  Nat'd  b'en  doin',  by  the  big  bugs  round 
town!  Judge  Geer,  he  fetched  'em  all  out  o'  their 
offices — Slade,  the  supervisor,  and  Fuller  Brothers, 
and  old  Sumner  Pratt — an'  all!  An'  Ben  Watson 
asked  could  he  have  a  copy  to  put  in  the  Biweekly. 
It's  goin'  to  take  the  whole  front  page,  with  an  editor' al 
inside.  He  said  the  Rockville  Center  News'd  most 
likely  copy  it  too. 

"I  was  like  in  a  dream!  .  .  .  All  I'd  aimed  to  do 
was  to  let  some  o'  them  folks  know  that  those  people 
acrost  the  ocean  had  thought  well  of  our  Nat,  an'  here 
they  was  breakin'  their  necks  to  git  in  on  it  too!  .  .  . 
Goin'  down  the  street  they  was  more  of  it.  Lu  Shiffer 
run  right  out  o'  the  hardware  store  an'  left  the  nails 
he  was  weighin'  to  shake  hands  with  me;  and  Jem 
Brand  came;  and  Lan'lord  Peters  come  out  o'  the 
Valley  House  an*  spoke  to  me.  ...  I  felt  awful 
public.  An'  Jim  Beckonridge  come  out  of  the  Em- 
porium to  shake  too. 

'"I  ain't  seen  you  down  in  town  fur  quite  a  spell/ 
he  sez.  'How  are  you  all  up  there  to  the  farm?  .  .  . 
Want  to  say  I'm  real  proud  o'  Nat — a  boy  from  round 
here!'  he  sez.  .  .  .  Old  Beckonridge,  that  was  always 
wantin'  to  arrest  Nat  fur  takin'  his  chestnuts  or  foolin' 
down  in  the  store! 

"I  just  let  'em  drift — seein'  they  had  it  all  fixed  fur 
me.  All  along  the  street  they  come  an'  spoke  to  me. 


THE  PATH  OF  GLORY  165 

Mame  Parmlee,  that  ain't  b'en  able  to  see  me  fur 
three  years,  left  off  sweepin'  her  porch  an'  come  down 
an'  shook  my  hand,  an'  cried  about  it;  an'  that  stylish 
Mis'  Willowby,  that's  president  o'  the  Civil  Club, 
followed  me  all  over  the  Square  and  asked  dare  she 
read  a  copy  o'  the  letter  an'  tell  about  Nat  to  the  school- 
house  next  Wednesday. 

"It  seems  Judge  Geer  had  gone  out  an'  spread  it 
broadcast  that  I  was  in  town,  for  they  followed  me 
everywhere.  Next  thing  I  run  into  Reverend  Kearns 
and  Reverend  Higby,  huntin'  me  hard.  They  both 
had  one  idee. 

"'We  wanted  to  have  a  memor'al  service  to  the 
churches  'bout  Nat,'  they  sez;  'then  it  come  over  us 
that  it  was  the  town's  affair  really.  So,  Mis'  Haynes,' 
they  sez,  'we  want  you  should  share  this  thing  with 
us.  You  mustn't  be  selfish.  You  gotta  give  us  a  little 
part  in  it  too.  Are  you  willin'?'" 

"It  knocked  me  dumb — me  givin'  anybody  any- 
thing! Well,  to  finish,  they's  to  be  a  big  public  service 
in  the  Town  Hall  on  Friday.  They'll  have  it  all  flags — 
French  ones,  an'  our'n  too.  An'  the  ministers'll  preach; 
an'  Judge  Geer'll  tell  Nat's  story  an'  speak  about  him; 
an*  the  Ladies'  Guild'll  serve  a  big  hot  supper,  because 
they'll  probably  be  hundreds  out;  an'  they'll  read  the 
letters  an'  have  prayers  for  our  Nat!"  She  faltered 
a  moment.  "An'  we'll  be  there  too — you  an*  me  an* 
Tom — settin'  in  the  seat  o'  honor,  right  up  front!  .  .  . 
It'll  be  the  greatest  funeral  service  this  town's  ever 
seen,  Luke." 

Maw's  face  was  crimson  with  emotion. 


166  THE  PATH  OF  GLORY 

"An'  Uncle  Clem  an'  Aunt  Mollie " 

"Oh — them!"  Maw  came  back  to  earth  and  smiled 
tolerantly.  "They  was  real  sharp  to  be  in  it  too. 
Mollie  took  me  into  the  parlor  an'  fetched  a  glass  o' 
wine  to  stren'then  me  up."  Maw  mused  a  moment; 
then  spoke  with  a  touch  of  patronage:  "I'm  goin'  to 
knit  Clem  some  new  socks  this  winter.  He  says  he 
can't  git  none  like  the  oldtime  wool  ones;  an'  the  mar- 
ket floors  are  cold.  Clem's  done  what  he  could,  an' 
I'll  be  real  glad  to  help  him  out.  .  .  .  Oh,  I  asked 
'em  to  come  an'  set  with  us  at  the  service — S'norta 
too.  I  allowed  we  could  manage  to  spare  'em  the 
room." 

She  dreamed  again,  launched  on  a  sea  of  glory;  then 
roused  to  her  final  triumph: 

"But  that's  only  part,  Luke.  The  best's  comin'. 
Jim  Beckonridge  wants  you  to  go  down  an'  see  him. 
'That  lame  boy  o'  yours,'  he  sez,  'was  in  here  a  spell 
ago  with  some  notion  about  raisin'  bees  an'  buckwheat 
together,  an'  gittin'  a  city  market  fur  buckwheat 
honey.  Slipped  my  mind,'  he  sez,  'till  I  heard  what 
Nat'd  done;  an'  then  it  all  come  back.  City  party 
this  summer  had  the  same  notion  an'  was  lookin'  out 
for  a  likely  place  to  invest  some  cash  in.  You  send 
that  boy  down  an'  we'll  talk  it  over.  Shouldn't  wonder 
if  he'd  get  some  backin'.  I  calculate  I  might  help  him, 
myself,'  he  sez,  'I  b'en  thinkin'  of  it  too.'  .  .  .  Don't 
seem  like  it  could  hardly  be  true." 

"Oh,  Maw!"  Luke's  pulses  were  leaping  wildly. 
Buckwheat  honey  was  the  dear  dream  of  many  a  long 
hour's  wistful  meditation.  "If  we  could — I  could 


THE  PATH  OF  GLORY  167 

study  up  about  it  an'  send  away  fur  printed  books. 
We  could  make  some  money 

But  Maw  had  not  yet  finished. 

"An*  they's  some  about  Tom,  too,  Luke!  That 
young  Doctor  Wells  down  there — he's  on'y  b'en  there 
a  year — he  come  right  up,  an'  spoke  to  me,  in  the 
midst  of  several.  'I  want  to  talk  about  your  boy,'  he 
sez.  'I've  wanted  to  fur  some  time,  but  didn't  like  to 
make  bold;  but  now  seem's  as  good  a  time  as  any.' 
'They're  all  talkin'  of  him,'  I  sez.  'Well,'  he  sez,  'I 
don't  mean  the  dead,  but  the  livin'  boy — the  one  folks 
calls  Big  Tom.  I've  heard  his  story,  an'  I  got  a  good 
look  over  him  down  here  in  the  store  a  while  ago. 
Woman' — he  sez  it  jest  like  that — 'if  that  big  boy  o' 
your'n  had  a  little  operation,  he'd  be  as  good  as 
any.' 

"I  answered  him  patient,  an'  told  him  what  ailed 
Tom  an'  why  he  couldn't  be  no  different — jest  what 
old  Doc  Andrews  told  us — that  they  was  a  little  piece 
o'  bone  druv  deep  into  his  skull  that  time  he  fell.  He 
spoke  real  vi'lent  then.  'But — my  Lord! — woman,' 
he  sez,  'that's  what  I'm  talkin'  about.  If  we' jack  up 
that  bone' — trepannin',  he  called  it  too — 'his  brains'd 
git  to  be  like  anybody  else's.'  Told  me  he  wants  fur  us 
to  let  him  look  after  it.  Won't  cost  anything  unless 
we  want.  They's  a  hospital  to  Rockville  would  tend 
to  it,  an*  glad  to — when  we  git  ready.  .  .  .  My  poor 
Tommy!  .  .  .  Don't  seem's  if  it  could  be  true." 

Her  face  softened,  and  she  broke  up  suddenly. 

"I  got  good  boys  all  round,"  she  wept.  "I  always 
said  it;  an'  now  folks  know." 


168  THE  PATH  OF  GLORY 

Luke  lay  on  the  old  settle,  thinking.  In  the  air- 
tight stove  the  hickory  fagots  crackled,  with  jeweled 
color-play.  On  the  other  side  Tom  sat  whittling  si- 
lently— Tom,  who  would  presently  whittle  no  more, 
but  rise  to  be  a  man. 

It  was  incredible!  Incredible  that  the  old  place 
might  some  day  shake  off  its  shackles  of  poverty  and 
be  organized  for  a  decent  struggle  with  life!  Incredible 
that  Maw — stepping  briskly  about  getting  the  supper 
— should  be  singing! 

Already  the  room  seemed  filled  and  warmed  with 
the  odors  of  prosperity  and  self-respect.  Maw  had 
put  a  red  geranium  on  the  table;  there  was  the  crispy 
fragrance  of  frying  salt  pork  and  soda  biscuit  in  the 
air. 

These  the  Hayneses!  These  people,  with  hope  and 
self-esteem  once  more  in  their  hearts!  These  people, 
with  a  new,  a  unique  place  in  the  community's  re- 
spect! It  was  all  like  a  beautiful  miracle;  and, 
thinking  of  its  maker,  Luke  choked  suddenly  and 
gulped. 

There  was  a  moist  spot  on  the  old  Mexican  hairless 
right  under  his  eyes;  but  it  had  been  made  by  tears  of 
pride,  not  sorrow.  Maw  was  right!  A  hero's  folks 
hadn't  ought  to  cry.  And  he  wouldn't.  Nat  was 
better  off  than  ever — safe  and  honored.  He  had  trod 
the  path  of  glory.  A  line  out  of  the  boy's  old  Reader 
sprang  to  his  mind:  "The  paths  of  glory  lead  but  to 
the  grave."  Oh,  but  it  wasn't  true!  Nat's  path  led 
to  life — to  hope;  to  help  for  all  of  them,  for  Nat's  own. 
In  his  death,  if  not  in  his  life,  he  had  rehabilitated 


THE  PATH  OF  GLORY  169 

them.    And  Nat — who  loved  them — would  look  down 
and  call  it  good. 

In  spite  of  himself  the  boy  sobbed,  visioning  his 
brother's  face. 

"Oh,  Nat!"  he  whispered.     "I  knew  you'd  do  it! 
I  always  said  you'd  do  somethin'  big  for  us  all." 

— MARY  BRECHT  PULVER. 


VIII 
SERGT.  WARREN  COMES  BACK  FROM  FRANCE 

IMMEDIATELY  after  voting,  the  Rev.  Jeremiah  Soule 
stepped  outside  the  town  hall  to  fortify  himself  with 
fresh  air  for  the  coming  meeting.  Several  others  had 
done  the  same. 

"Been  a  hard  winter,  Mr.  Soule,'*  politely  remarked 
one  of  the  loiterers  about  the  door.  He  was  clad  for 
the  gusts  of  March  like  a  sealer  about  to  venture  forth 
upon  an  Arctic  floe. 

"And  especially  for  the  boys  in  the  trenches,"  said 
the  minister. 

"That's  a  fact,  sir.  I  didn't  mean  we'd  ought  to 
complain.  We  had  our  share  of  coal  and  wood,  I  guess, 
if  the  wood  was  green  and  the  coal  mostly  slate." 

"And  we  had  the  money  to  pay  for  it." 

The  group  of  men  stirred  a  little  uneasily. 

"Honestly  made,  I  think  you'll  admit  that,  sir,"  said 
Arthur  Watts,  a  strapping  fellow  of  thirty  years,  who 
had  been  called  in  the  first  draft  and  rejected  on  ac- 
count of  his  poor  teeth. 

"I  believe  so — quite,"  admitted  Mr.  Soule.  "We 
are  making  good  rope  for  the  government  and  our  allies, 
and  no  one  is  better  pleased  over  it  than  I.  I'm  proud 
of  the  cordage  plant.  Yes,  since  this  dreadful  war 
had  to  be,  the  town  has  come  honestly  enough  by  its 
prosperity." 

171 


172    SERGT.  WARREN  BACK  FROM  FRANCE 

The  group  felt  that  Mr.  Soule  had  tactfully  dodged 
the  real  issue,  and  they  were  content  to  have  it  so.  Just 
then  the  polls  were  closed,  and  those  who  had  brought 
lunch  boxes  proceeded  to  consume  the  contents.  Others 
presented  themselves  at  the  anteroom,  where  George 
Bassett  was  dispensing  his  famous  chowder  and  coffee, 
together  with  pickles  and  bread  and  butter. 

"It  frets  the  parson  to  see  us  keeping  our  money 
instead  of  blowing  it  all  out  in  charity,"  remarked  Watts, 
across  a  steaming  mug  of  strong  coffee.  He  laughed 
indulgently. 

His  friends  did  not  echo  his  amusement.  They 
looked,  if  not  exactly  ill  at  ease,  at  any  rate  somewhat 
sober. 

The  hall  was  packed  when  Joel  Holmes,  a  massive 
and  imperturbable  person,  was  chosen  moderator  for 
the  tenth  successive  time.  Warrant  in  one  large  hand 
and  gavel  in  the  other,  he  inscrutably  stared  upon  the 
expectant  voters  for  a  weighty  minute. 

"The  meeting  will  please  come  to  order,"  he  an- 
nounced. The  gavel  smote  the  desk  resoundingly. 

As  usual,  the  first  person  to  be  recognized  was  fiery 
little  Mr.  Abel  Crabbe,  who  had  a  few  withering  re- 
marks to  make  concerning  the  warrant  as  a  whole. 
He  was  greatly  applauded.  As  a  conscientious  objector 
to  everything,  Abel  was  looked  upon  as  an  interesting 
feature  of  town  meeting. 

A  number  of  articles  were  then  discussed  and  dis- 
posed of  without  excitement  until  Henry  Torrey  rose. 
He  was  as  much  of  an  objector  as  Mr.  Crabbe,  but  he 
dealt  in  irony  rather  than  in  blunt  scorn.  With  a  grim 


SERGT.  WARREN  BACK  FROM  FRANCE    173 

smile  he  proceeded  to  ridicule  the  library  directors. 
When  he  had  exposed  them  in  their  true  colors,  he 
made  an  impassioned  motion  to  halve  the  appropriation 
they  asked  for  in  Article  6  of  the  warrant. 

The  motion  was  enthusiastically  seconded,  but  on 
being  put  to  vote  Torrey's  was  the  only  ay.  The  crowd 
enjoyed  Torrey  as  they  enjoyed  Abel  Crabbe,  but  they 
had  perfect  faith  in  the  library  directors,  the  town 
officers  and  the  warrant. 

Early  in  the  proceedings  it  was  evident  that  Article 
No.  10  was  to  furnish  the  event  of  the  day.  It  ran  as 
follows : 

"That  the  sum  of  £25,000  be  appropriated  for  the 
improvement  and  embellishment  of  Farragut  Square, 
said  improvement  to  include  the  removal  of  the  four 
old  buildings  now  abutting  upon  it,  the  erection  of  a 
flagpole  and  a  suitable  band  stand  and  the  widening  of 
Brig  Street  on  the  bay  side  of  the  square." 

When  the  article  was  reached,  no  disposition  was 
shown  to  dispose  of  it  quickly.  Fenville  wished  to  hear 
the  report  of  the  committee  and  the  opinions  and  im- 
pressions of  each  and  every  member  thereon.  The 
plan  had  caught  the  popular  fancy.  Nearly  every  man 
there  was  ready  to  back  it  firmly,  even  boastfully. 

Pompous  Mr.  Baxter,  the  chairman  of  the  committee, 
sounded  the  keynote.  He  sketched  the  history  of  the 
cordage  plant,  which  had  begun  as  an  unaspiring  rope- 
walk.  He  compared  it  to  the  ugly  duckling  that  became 
a  regal  swan.  And  the  swan,  he  said,  pursuing  the 
simile,  had  not  flown  out  of  their  hands  in  spite  of  the 
great  wings  it  had  grown. 


174    SERGT.  WARREN  BACK  FROM  FRANCE 

At  this  point  the  moderator's  voice  and  gavel  were 
called  upon  to  quell  a  disturbance  in  the  rear  of  the  hall 
apparently  occasioned  by  the  entrance  of  some  late 
arrivals. 

When  order  was  restored  Mr.  Baxter,  continuing  the 
paean  to  the  town's  prosperity,  spoke  of  the  uniquely 
local  character  of  the  cordage  plant;  of  the  fact  that 
virtually  everyone,  from  the  president  down  to  the  office 
boy,  concerned  with  it  was  a  native  of  Fenville.  And 
besides  a  liberal  salary  everyone  had  a  share  in  the 
profits.  Nearly  every  penny  of  the  stock  was  owned 
right  in  the  town  of  Fenville.  All  of  which  was  no  news, 
but  everyone  relished  Baxter's  glowing  phrases  just  the 
same. 

The  speeches  of  the  other  committeemen  were  in 
the  same  tenor.  Fenville  had  made  money  out  of  its 
cordage;  was  still  making  money.  It  could  afford  to 
pat  its  own  back,  and  the  pat  might  well  take  the  form 
of  a  renovated  and  beautified  town  square  that  would 
advertise  its  business  smartness  to  all  beholders. 

As  the  last  of  the  committeemen  sat  down,  some  one 
in  the  rear  of  the  hall  addressed  the  moderator. 

"Mr.  ?"  queried  that  official,  unable  to  see  the 

speaker  clearly.  Like  the  old  hall,  recently  destroyed 
by  fire,  the  new  structure  had  made  a  concession  to 
the  fair  and  inquisitive  sex  in  the  shape  of  a  deep  rear 
balcony. 

"Warren— Miles  Warren." 

An  excited  craning  of  heads  followed,  and  even  Joel 
Holmes  showed  the  human  being  beneath  the  armor  of 
officialdom. 


SERGT.  WARREN  BACK  FROM  FRANCE    175 

"Miles  Warren!"  he  ejaculated.  Then  his  gavel 
mechanically  reminded  him  of  his  duties  and  he  re- 
called the  meeting  to  order.  It  took  vigorous  rap- 
ping to  still  the  persistent  murmurs  and  the  eager 
turnings. 

"I'd  like  to  say  a  few  words  about  Article  10,"  said 
the  man  under  the  low  balcony. 

"Well,  I  guess  you  can!"  boomed  the  moderator. 
He  was  preserving  his  self-control  with  difficulty.  His 
hands  fidgeted  and  his  circular  face  showed  a  deepening 
crimson.  "But  we  can't  hear  what  you  say  way  back 
there — or  see  you,  either,"  he  added.  "Please  step  a 
little  farther  forward  if  you  will,  Mr.  Warren." 

The  storm  of  welcoming  applause  for  the  son  who 
had  so  unexpectedly  returned  to  his  native  town  after 
two  years  of  splendid  service  in  the  far-famed  Foreign 
Legion  suddenly  fell  to  a  shocked  silence.  They  saw 
now  why  Sergt.  Warren  had  come  home.  His  father 
stood  beside  him.  Miles  needed  some  one  to  guide 
him  up  the  narrow  aisle — for  he  was  blind. 

Fenville  had  heard  of  the  metal  cross  pinned  to  the 
faded  tunic  and  had  shared  the  pride  of  John  Warren 
and  his  wife,  Abigail;  but  it  had  not  heard  of  the 
scarred  face  and  sightless  eyes.  Miles  had  gone  forth 
to  fight  for  democracy  "like  a  true  knight  of  old," 
the  Fenville  Weekly  Gazette  had  said.  The  towns- 
people had  not  smiled  at  the  phrase,  for  there  had  al- 
ways been  something  gallant  in  Miles;  he  had  always 
had  a  fearless  and  honorable  outlook  upon  life. 

"I'm  not  much  use  to  them  over  there,  so  it  seems 
good  to  get  home,"  he  said.  "And  on  town-meeting 


176    SERGT.  WARREN  BACK  FROM  FRANCE 

day.  I  knew  father  wanted  to  be  here,  and  I  did,  too, 
so  we  came  right  over  from  the  depot." 

Sightless:  thrown  back  into  the  discard.  But  there 
was  the  same  firm  mouth  and  the  same  upright  car- 
riage of  the  well-shaped  head.  Broken?  Not  a  bit  of 
it.  Everyone  could  see  that.  The  old  spirit  was  there, 
just  as  gallant  as  when  he  had  set  out  for  the  battle- 
fields of  France. 

"This  Article  No.  10,"  continued  the  sergeant.  "You 
don't  know  how  strange  it  sounds.  Because  I've  come 
straight  home  from  over  there,  you  know.  I  was  going 
to  say,  without  seeing  anything  on  the  way."  He 
smiled.  "And  that's  true,  too.  What  I  mean  is,  I 
haven't  had  time  to  get  adjusted  to  the  change.  It 
wasn't  till  just  now  that  I  said  to  myself,  the  war's 
thousands  of  miles  off,  way  across  the  ocean.  Not  that 
the  ocean  would  stop  Fritz  from  getting  at  us  mighty 
quick  if  he  ever  beats  us  over  there.  You  may  depend 
on  that. 

"Some  one  has  to  make  the  things  that  are  needed 
and  get  paid  for  them.  That's  of  course.  But  I  haven't 
been  seeing  that  side.  I've  been  seeing  France  and 
England  and  our  own  boys  with  their  backs  to  the  wall. 
I've  been  seeing  new  graveyards  grow;  bigger  than  big 
towns — as  big  as  cities.  And  cities  that  were  nothing 
but  graveyards.  Towns  that  were  nothing  but  ash 
heaps.  Rich  lands  churned  up  into  terrible  deserts. 

"And  I've  met  men — met  them  all  the  time — who'd 
been  seeing  the  same  and  worse  in  Russia  and  Poland, 
Serbia  and  Roumania — the  whole  Christian  world 
being  battered  and  ripped  to  pieces. 


SERGT.  WARREN  BACK  FROM  FRANCE    177 

"That  is  the  way  you  think  about  it  over  there. 
What  can  you  do  to  stop  it — how  can  you  help  the 
millions  that  have  lost  their  fathers  or  mothers,  hus- 
bands or  wives,  or  children — that  have  no  food  or  homes 
or  country?  That  is  what  you  ask  yourself  day  and 
night. 

"You  can  never  give  them  back  what  they  have 
lost.  But  if  you  had  money,  you  could  keep  some 
of  them  from  dying  of  cold  and  hunger;  little  children 
at  least.  That  is  about  all  money  means  to  you  over 
there. 

"So  when  I  come  home  to  hear  that  Fenville  has 
grown  rich,  why,  I  can't  seem  to  sense  it!  And  that 
you  want  to  fix  up  Farragut  Square, — make  it  pretty, — 
buy  the  town  a  kind  of  decoration  because  it  has  been 
lucky  enough  and  smart  enough  to  make  money — out 
of  the  war.  It's  like  blood  money  to  me — like  blood 
itself;  a  drop  for  every  penny." 

Fenville  had  never  tolerated  criticism,  but  the  man 
in  the  faded  uniform  with  the  cross  on  his  tunic  and 
his  head  up,  and  his  poor,  blind,  scarred  face,  exerted  a 
strange  influence  over  the  audience.  Even  the  least 
imaginative  man  had  his  vision  of  what  that  figure  sym- 
bolized. 

"It  was  looking  at  him,  as  much  as  hearing  him 
speak — why,  I  seemed  to  get  a  sight  right  over  to 
France  as  clear  as  if  I  had  been  there,"  explained  Mr. 
Totten  afterwards.  "France  made  Farragut  Square 
look  kind  of  small." 

"I'll  say  just  one  thing  more,"  Miles  went  on,  and 
you  could  have  heard  a  pin  drop  in  that  hall.  "If  any 


i78    SERGT.  WARREN  BACK  FROM  FRANCE 

of  our  boys  don't  come  back, — Lem  Chapman  and 
Frank  Keeler  and  the  others, — those  that  do,  will  they 
think  a  prettified  Farragut  Square  is  the  best  monument 
for  the  ones  who  died  for  us  over  there  ? " 

The  sergeant  turned,  and  John  Warren  took  hold  of 
his  arm  to  lead  him  back.  Mr.  Chapman,  Lem's  father, 
was  up  like  a  flash. 

"Hold  on!"  he  shouted.    "No,  it  ain't,  by  Jupiter!" 

Crash!  Out  came  the  handclapping  like  the  rattle  of 
rifle  fire.  More  than  one  shrewd  old  eye  was  moist, 
and  few  were  the  hearts  that  did  not  beat  with  a  more 
generous  quickness. 

"What  can  we  do,  Sergt.  Miles?"  asked  Mr.  Chap- 
man. "You  have  told  us  what  we  shouldn't  do,  and  I 
for  one  thank  you  for  it.  We  want  to  do  the  right  thing. 
Every  man  of  us  here  does.  Tell  us  what  it  is." 

"Let  us  dispose  of  Article  10  first,"  said  Dr.  Shepard. 
The  house  approved,  and  Mr.  Chapman  gave  way. 
The  article  was  put  in  the  form  of  a  motion,  was  voted 
upon,  and  defeated  as  if  it  had  never  had  a  friend  in  the 
world. 

"Make  a  motion,  Miles!"  shouted  a  score  of 
voices. 

"Do  you  want  to  know  what  I  should  do?"  said  the 
soldier.  "There  are  places  in  France  and  Belgium  that 
used  to  be  towns.  Some  haven't  even  the  cellars  left. 
An  American  society  has  been  formed  to  take  hold  of 
the  work  of  building  up  those  places  after  the  war. 
We  could  write  to  that  society  and  get  the  name  of  a 
town  that  once  was — a  little  one;  one  where  perhaps 
our  own  boys  have  fought.  Fenville  could  put  the 


SERGT.  WARREN  BACK  FROM  FRANCE    179 

money  she  meant  to  spend  on  herself  into  helping  to 
make  it  a  town  again.  It  would  help,  don't  you  worry 
about  that.  So  Fenville  could  feel,  always,  long  after 
our  time,  that  that  little  French  town  was  her  camarade. 
And  it  would  be  her  bit;  Fenville's  bit." 

When  he  could  make  himself  heard,  the  Rev.  Jere- 
miah Soule  made  a  motion,  the  gist  of  which  was  that 
a  committee  be  appointed  to  correspond  with  the 
society  with  the  object  of  learning  the  name  of  some 
small  devastated  town  in  France  or  Belgium  that  would 
be  a  worthy  recipient  of  twenty-five  thousand  dollars 
from  Fenville's  treasury,  the  same  to  be  expended  to- 
ward rebuilding  the  town  at  the  end  of  the  war. 

A  dozen  voices  seconded  the  motion,  and  on  being 
put  to  vote  it  was  carried  unanimously.  Mr.  Crabbe, 
the  conscientious  objector,  was  one  of  the  first  to  rise 
on  the  ay  vote.  The  fiery  little  man  had  his  streak  of 
sentiment,  after  all. 

So  had  Henry  Torrey,  who  said  gruffly  that  he  was 
glad  to  see  the  town's  money  spent  for  a  really  useful 
purpose  for  once. 

"Three  cheers  for  Sergt.  Warren,  then!"  shouted  Mr. 
Chapman.  "And  make  them  rousers!" 

"He  and  John  went  out,"  said  a  voice  in  the  rear 
of  the  hall. 

"Cheer  him  from  the  steps!"  cried  another. 

The  crowd  filed  out.  The  two  Warrens  were  walking 
down  the  road.  The  sergeant  had  his  father's  arm; 
but  his  head  was  up,  and  it  was  not  he,  but  the  older 
man,  that  had  the  air  of  being  led.  For  some  reason 
the  crowd  fell  silent. 


i8o    SERGT.  WARREN  BACK  FROM  FRANCE 

Finally  some  one  said  crisply,  "Miles  Warren  always 
could  see  straight.  And  I  tell  you  he  can  see  as 
straight's  ever,  even  if  he  is  blind." 

— FISHER  AMES,  JR. 


IX 

THE  COWARD 

WE  will  call  him  Albert  Lloyd.  That  wasn't  his  name, 
but  it  will  do: 

Albert  Lloyd  was  what  the  world  terms  a  coward. 

In  London  they  called  him  a  slacker. 

His  country  had  been  at  war  nearly  eighteen  months, 
and  still  he  was  not  in  khaki. 

He  had  no  good  reason  for  not  enlisting,  being  alone 
in  the  world,  having  been  educated  in  an  Orphan 
Asylum,  and  there  being  no  one  dependent  upon  him 
for  support.  He  had  no  good  position  to  lose,  and 
there  was  no  sweetheart  to  tell  him  with  her  lips  to  go, 
while  her  eyes  pleaded  for  him  to  stay. 

Every  time  he  saw  a  recruiting  sergeant,  he'd  slink 
around  the  corner  out  of  sight,  with  a  terrible  fear 
gnawing  at  his  heart.  When  passing  the  big  recruiting 
posters,  and  on  his  way  to  business  and  back  he  passed 
many,  he  would  pull  down  his  cap  and  look  the  other 
way,  to  get  away  from  that  awful  finger  pointing  at 
him,  under  the  caption,  "Your  King  and  Country 
Need  You";  or  the  boring  eyes  of  Kitchener,  which 
burned  into  his  very  soul,  causing  him  to  shudder. 

Then  the  Zeppelin  raids — during  them,  he  used  to 
crouch  in  a  corner  of  his  boarding-house  cellar,  whim- 
pering like  a  whipped  puppy  and  calling  upon  the 
Lord  to  protect  him. 

181 


1 82  THE  COWARD 

Even  his  landlady  despised  him,  although  she  had 
to  admit  that  he  was  "good  pay." 

He  very  seldom  read  the  papers,  but  one  momentous 
morning,  the  landlady  put  the  morning  paper  at  his 
place  before  he  came  down  to  breakfast.  Taking  his 
seat,  he  read  the  flaring  headline,"  Conscription  Bill 
Passed,"  and  nearly  fainted.  Excusing  himself,  he 
stumbled  upstairs  to  his  bedroom,  with  the  horror  of 
it  gnawing  into  his  vitals. 

Having  saved  up  a  few  pounds,  he  decided  not  to 
leave  the  house,  and  to  sham  sickness,  so  he  stayed 
in  his  room  and  had  the  landlady  serve  his  meals 
there. 

Every  time  there  was  a  knock  at  the  door,  he  trem- 
bled all  over,  imagining  it  was  a  policeman  who  had 
come  to  take  him  away  to  the  army. 

One  morning  his  fears  were  realized.  Sure  enough 
there  stood  a  policeman  with  the  fatal  paper.  Taking 
it  in  his  trembling  hand,  he  read  that  he,  Albert  Lloyd, 
was  ordered  to  report  himself  to  the  nearest  recruiting 
station  for  physical  examination.  He  reported  im- 
mediately, because  he  was  afraid  to  disobey. 

The  doctor  looked  with  approval  upon  Lloyd's  six 
feet  of  physical  perfection,  and  thought  what  a  fine 
guardsman  he  would  make,  but  examined  his  heart 
twice  before  he  passed  him  as  "physically  fit";  it  was 
beating  so  fast. 

From  the  recruiting  depot  Lloyd  was  taken,  with 
many  others,  in  charge  of  a  sergeant,  to  the  training 
depot  at  Aldershot,  where  he  was  given  an  outfit  of 
khaki,  and  drew  his  other  equipment.  He  made  a 


THE  COWARD  183 

fine-looking  soldier,  except  for  the  slight  shrinking  in 
his  shoulders,  and  the  hunted  look  in  his  eyes. 

At  the  training  depot  it  does  not  take  long  to  find 
out  a  man's  character,  and  Lloyd  was  promptly  dubbed 
"Windy."  In  the  English  Army,  "windy"  means 
cowardly. 

The  smallest  recruit  in  the  barracks  looked  on  him 
with  contempt,  and  was  not  slow  to  show  it  in  many 
ways. 

Lloyd  was  a  good  soldier,  learned  quickly,  obeyed 
every  order  promptly,  never  groused  at  the  hardest 
fatigues.  He  was  afraid  to.  He  lived  in  deadly  fear 
of  the  officers  and  "Non-Corns"  over  him.  They  also 
despised  him. 

One  morning  about  three  months  after  his  enlist- 
ment, Lloyd's  company  was  paraded,  and  the  names 
picked  for  the  next  draft  to  France  were  read.  When 
his  name  was  called,  he  did  not  step  out  smartly,  two 
paces  to  the  front,  and  answer  cheerfully,  "Here,  sir," 
as  the  others  did.  He  just  fainted  in  ranks,  and  was 
carried  to  barracks  amid  the  sneers  of  the  rest. 

That  night  was  an  agony  of  misery  to  him.  He 
could  not  sleep.  Just  cried  and  whimpered  in  his  bunk, 
because  on  the  morrow  the  draft  was  to  sail  for  France, 
where  he  would  see  death  on  all  sides,  and  perhaps  be 
killed  himself.  On  the  steamer,  crossing  the  Channel, 
he  would  have  jumped  overboard  to  escape,  but  was 
afraid  of  drowning. 

Arriving  in  France,  he  and  the  rest  were  huddled 
into  cattle  cars.  On  the  side  of  each  appeared  in  white 
letters,  "Chevaux  8,  Hommes  40."  After  hours  of 


i84  THE  COWARD 

bumping  over  the  uneven  French  roadbeds  they  ar- 
rived at  the  training  base  of  Rouen. 

At  this  place  they  were  put  through  a  week's  rigid 
training  in  trench  warfare.  On  the  morning  of  the 
eighth  day,  they  paraded  at  ten  o'clock,  and  were 

inspected  and  passed  by  General  H ,  then  were 

marched  to  the  Quartermaster's,  to  draw  their  gas 
helmets  and  trench  equipment. 

At  four  in  the  afternoon,  they  were  again  hustled 
into  cattle  cars.  This  time,  the  journey  lasted  two 
days.  They  disembarked  at  the  town  of  Prevent,  and 
could  hear  a  distant  dull  booming.  With  knees  shak- 
ing, Lloyd  asked  the  Sergeant  what  the  noise  was,  and 
nearly  dropped  when  the  Sergeant  replied  in  a  some- 
what bored  tone: 

"Oh,  them's  the  guns  up  the  line.  We'll  be  up  there 
in  a  couple  o'  days  or  so.  Don't  worry,  my  laddie, 
you'll  see  more  of  'em  than  you  want  before  you 
get  'ome  to  Blighty  again,  that  is,  if  you're  lucky 
enough  to  get  back.  Now  lend  a  hand  there  unloadin* 
them  cars,  and  quit  that  everlastin'  shakin'.  I  be- 
lieve yer  scared."  The  last  with  a  contemptuous 
sneer. 

They  marched  ten  kilos,  full  pack,  to  a  little  dilapi- 
dated village,  and  the  sound  of  the  guns  grew  louder, 
constantly  louder. 

The  village  was  full  of  soldiers  who  turned  out  to 
inspect  the  new  draft,  the  men  who  were  shortly  to  be 
their  mates  in  the  trenches,  for  they  were  going  "up 
the  line"  on  the  morrow,  to  "take  over"  their  certain 
sector  of  trenches. 


THE  COWARD  185 

The  draft  was  paraded  in  front  of  Battalion  Head- 
quarters, and  the  men  were  assigned  to  companies. 

Lloyd  was  the  only  man  assigned  to  "D"  Company. 
Perhaps  the  officer  in  charge  of  the  draft  had  something 
to  do  with  it,  for  he  called  Lloyd  aside,  and  said: 

"Lloyd,  you  are  going  to  a  new  company.  No  one 
knows  you.  Your  bed  will  be  as  you  make  it,  so  for 
God's  sake,  brace  up  and  be  a  man.  I  think  you  have 
the  stuff  in  you,  my  boy,  so  good-bye,  and  the  best  of 
luck  to  you." 

The  next  day  the  battalion  took  over  their  part  of 
the  trenches.  It  happened  to  be  a  very  quiet  day. 
The  artillery  behind  the  lines  was  still,  except  for  an 
occasional  shell  sent  over  to  let  the  Germans  know  the 
gunners  were  not  asleep. 

In  the  darkness,  in  single  file,  the  Company  slowly 
wended  their  way  down  the  communication  trench 
to  the  front  line.  No  one  noticed  Lloyd's  white  and 
drawn  face. 

After  they  had  relieved  the  Company  in  the  trenches, 
Lloyd,  with  two  of  the  old  company  men,  was  put  on 
guard  in  one  of  the  traverses.  Not  a  shot  was  fired 
from  the  German  lines,  and  no  one  paid  any  attention 
to  him  crouched  on  the  firing  step. 

On  the  first  time  in,  a  new  recruit  is  not  required  to 
stand  with  his  head  "over  the  top."  He  only  "sits  it 
out,"  while  the  older  men  keep  watch. 

At  about  ten  o'clock,  all  of  a  sudden,  he  thought 
hell  had  broken  loose,  and  crouched  and  shivered  up 
against  the  parapet.  Shells  started  bursting,  as  he 
imagined,  right  in  their  trench,  when  in  fact  they  were 


1 86  THE  COWARD 

landing  about  a  hundred  yards  in  rear  of  them,  in  the 
second  lines. 

One  of  the  older  men  on  guard,  turning  to  his  mate, 
said: 

"There  goes  Fritz  with  those  trench  mortars  again. 
It's  about  time  our  artillery  'taped'  them,  and  sent 
over  a  few.  Where's  that  blighter  of  a  draft  man 
gone  to?  There's  his  rifle  leaning  against  the  parapet. 
He  must  have  legged  it.  Just  keep  your  eye  peeled, 
Dick,  while  I  report  it  to  the  Sergeant.  I  wonder  if 
the  fool  knows  he  can  be  shot  for  such  tricks  as  leavin' 
his  post." 

Lloyd  had  gone.  When  the  trench  mortars  opened 
up,  a  maddening  terror  seized  him  and  he  wanted  to 
run,  to  get  away  from  that  horrible  din,  anywhere  to 
safety.  So  quietly  sneaking  around  the  traverse,  he 
came  to  the  entrance  of  a  communication  trench,  and 
ran  madly  and  blindly  down  it,  running  into  traverses, 
stumbling  into  muddy  holes,  and  falling  full  length 
over  trench  grids. 

Groping  blindly,  with  his  arms  stretched  out  in 
front  of  him,  he  at  last  came  out  of  the  trench  into  the 
village,  or  what  used  to  be  a  village,  before  the  Ger- 
man artillery  razed  it. 

Mixed  with  his  fear,  he  had  a  peculiar  sort  of  cun- 
ning, which  whispered  to  him  to  avoid  all  sentries, 
because  if  they  saw  him  he  would  be  sent  back  to  that 
awful  destruction  in  the  front  line,  and  perhaps  be 
killed  or  maimed.  The  thought  made  him  shudder, 
the  cold  sweat  coming  out  in  beads  on  his  face. 

On  his  left,  in  the  darkness,  he  could  make  out  the 


THE  COWARD  187 

shadowy  forms  of  trees;  crawling  on  his  hands  and 
knees,  stopping  and  crouching  with  fear  at  each  shell- 
burst,  he  finally  reached  an  old  orchard,  and  cowered 
at  the  base  of  a  shot-scarred  apple-tree. 

He  remained  there  all  night,  listening  to  the  sound 
of  the  guns  and  ever  praying,  praying  that  his  useless 
life  would  be  spared. 

As  dawn  began  to  break,  he  could  discern  little  dark 
objects  protruding  from  the  ground  all  about  him. 
Curiosity  mastered  his  fear  and  he  crawled  to  one  of 
the  objects,  and  there,  in  the  uncertain  light,  he  read 
on  a  little  wooden  cross: 

"Pte.  H.  S.  Wheaton,  No.  1670,  ist  London  Regt. 
R.  F.  Killed  in  action,  April  25,  1916.  R.  I.  P." 
(Rest  in  Peace). 

When  it  dawned  on  him  that  he  had  been  hiding  all 
night  in  a  cemetery,  his  reason  seemed  to  leave  him, 
and  a  mad  desire  to  be  free  from  it  all  made  him  rush 
madly  away,  falling  over  little  wooden  crosses,  smash- 
ing some  and  trampling  others  under  his  feet. 

In  his  flight,  he  came  to  an  old  French  dugout,  half 
caved  in,  and  partially  filled  with  slimy  and  filthy 
water. 

Like  a  fox  being  chased  by  the  hounds,  he  ducked 
into  this  hole,  and  threw  himself  on  a  pile  of  old  empty 
sandbags,  wet  and  mildewed.  Then — unconscious- 
ness. 

On  the  next  day,  he  came  to;  far  distant  voices 
sounded  in  his  ears.  Opening  his  eyes,  in  the  entrance 
of  the  dugout  he  saw  a  Corporal  and  two  men  with 
fixed  bayonets. 


1 88  THE  COWARD 

The  Corporal  was  addressing  him: 

"Get  up,  you  white-livered  blighter!  Curse  you 
and  the  day  you  ever  joined  "D"  Company,  spoiling 
their  fine  record  1  It'll  be  you  up  against  the  wall,  and 
a  good  job  too.  Get  a  hold  of  him,  men,  and  if  he 
makes  a  break,  give  him  the  bayonet,  and  send  it  home, 
the  cowardly  sneak.  Come  on,  you,  move,  we've 
been  looking  for  you  long  enough." 

Lloyd,  trembling  and  weakened  by  his  long  fast, 
tottered  out,  assisted  by  a  soldier  on  each  side  of 
him.  N 

They  took  him  before  the  Captain,  but  could  get 
nothing  out  of  him  but: 

"For  God's  sake,  sir,  don't  have  me  shot,  don't 
have  me  shot!" 

The  Captain,  utterly  disgusted  with  him,  sent  him 
under  escort  to  Division  Headquarters  for  trial  by 
court-martial,  charged  with  desertion  under  fire. 

They  shoot  deserters  in  France. 

During  his  trial,  Lloyd  sat  as  one  dazed,  and  could 
put  nothing  forward  in  his  defense,  only  an  occasional 
"Don't  have  me  shot!" 

His  sentence  was  passed:  "To  be  shot  at  3:38  o'clock 
on  the  morning  of  May  18,  1916."  This  meant  that 
he  had  only  one  more  day  to  live. 

He  did  not  realize  the  awfulness  of  his  sentence,  his 
brain  seemed  paralyzed.  He  knew  nothing  of  his  trip, 
under  guard,  in  a  motor  lorry  to  the  sand-bagged 
guardroom  in  the  village,  where  he  was  dumped  on  the 
floor  and  left,  while  a  sentry  with  a  fixed  bayonet 
paced  up  and  down  in  front  of  the  entrance. 


THE  COWARD  189 

Bully  beef,  water,  and  biscuits  were  left  beside  him 
for  his  supper. 

The  sentry,  seeing  that  he  ate  nothing,  came  inside 
and  shook  him  by  the  shoulder,  saying  in  a  kind  voice: 

"Cheero,  laddie,  better  eat  something.  You'll  feel 
better.  Don't  give  up  hope.  You'll  be  pardoned 
before  morning.  I  know  the  way  they  run  these  things. 
They're  only  trying  to  scare  you,  that's  all.  Come 
now,  that's  a  good  lad,  eat  something.  It'll  make  the 
world  look  different  to  y/ou." 

The  good-hearted  sentry  knew  he  was  lying  about 
the  pardon.  He  knew  nothing  short  of  a  miracle  could 
save  the  poor  lad. 

Lloyd  listened  eagerly  to  his  sentry's  words,  and 
believed  them.  A  look  of  hope  came  into  his  eyes,  and 
he  ravenously  ate  the  meal  beside  him. 

In  about  an  hour's  time,  the  Chaplain  came  to  see 
him,  but  Lloyd  would  have  none  of  him.  He  wanted 
no  parson;  he  was  to  be  pardoned. 

The  artillery  behind  the  lines  suddenly  opened  up 
with  everything  they  had.  An  intense  bombardment 
of  the  enemy's  lines  had  commenced.  The  roar  of  the 
guns  was  deafening.  Lloyd's  fears  came  back  with  a 
rush,  and  he  cowered  on  the  earthen  floor  with  his 
hands  over  his  face. 

The  sentry,  seeing  his  position,  came  in  and  tried- 
to  cheer  him  by  talking  to  him: 

"Never  mind  them  guns,  boy,  they  won't  hurt  you. 
They  are  ours.  We  are  giving  the  'Bodies'  a  dose  of 
their  own  medicine.  Our  boys  are  going  over  the  top 
at  dawn  of  the  morning  to  take  their  trenches.  We'll 


190  THE  COWARD 

give  'em  a  taste  of  cold  steel  with  their  sausages  and 
beer.  You  just  sit  tight  now  until  they  relieve  you. 
I'll  have  to  go  now,  lad,  as  it's  nearly  time  for  my 
relief,  and  I  don't  want  them  to  see  me  a-talkin'  with 
you.  So  long,  laddie,  cheero." 

With  this,  the  sentry  resumed  the  pacing  of  his 
post.  In  about  ten  minutes'  time  he  was  relieved,  and 
a  "D"  Company  man  took  his  place. 

Looking  into  the  guardhouse,  the  sentry  noticed  the 
cowering  attitude  of  Lloyd,  and,  with  a  sneer,  said 
to  him: 

"Instead  of  whimpering  in  that  corner,  you  ought 
to  be  saying  your  prayers.  It's  bally  conscripts  like 
you  what's  spoilin'  our  record.  We've  been  out  here 
nigh  onto  eighteen  months,  and  you're  the  first  man 
to  desert  his  post.  The  whole  Battalion  is  laughin* 
and  pokin'  fun  at  'D'  Company,  bad  luck  to  you! 
but  you  won't  get  another  chance  to  disgrace  us. 
They'll  put  your  lights  out  in  the  mornin'." 

After  listening  to  this  tirade,  Lloyd,  in  a  faltering 
voice,  asked:  "They  are  not  going  to  shoot  me,  are 
they?  Why,  the  other  sentry  said  they'd  pardon  me. 
For  God's  sake — don't  tell  me  I'm  to  be  shot!"  and 
his  voice  died  away  in  a  sob. 

"Of  course,  they're  going  to  shoot  you.  The  other 
sentry  was  jest  a-kiddin'  you.  Jest  like  old  Smith. 
Always  a-tryin'  to  cheer  some  one.  You  ain't  got  no 
more  chance  o'  bein'  pardoned  than  I  have  of  gettin' 
to  be  Colonel  of  my  'Batt.'" 

When  the  fact  that  all  hope  was  gone  finally  entered 
Lloyd's  brain,  a  calm  seemed  to  settle  over  him,  and 


THE  COWARD  I9i 

rising  to  his  knees,  with  his  arms  stretched  out  to 
heaven,  he  prayed,  and  all  of  his  soul  entered  into  the 
prayer: 

"Oh,  good  and  merciful  God,  give  me  strength  to 
die  like  a  man!  Deliver  me  from  this  coward's  death. 
Give  me  a  chance  to  die  like  my  mates  in  the  fighting 
line,  to  die  fighting  for  my  country.  I  ask  this  of  thee." 

A  peace,  hitherto  unknown,  came  to  him,  and  he 
crouched  and  cowered  no  more,  but  calmly  waited  the 
dawn,  ready  to  go  to  his  death.  The  shells  were  burst- 
ing all  around  the  guardroom,  but  he  hardly  noticed 
them. 

While  waiting  there,  the  voice  of  the  sentry,  singing 
in  a  low  tone,  came  to  him.  He  was  singing  the  chorus 
of  the  popular  trench  ditty: 

"  I  want  to  go  home,  I  want  to  go  home. 
"I  don't  want  to  go  to  the  trenches  no  more. 

Where  the  'whizzbangs'  and  'sausages'  roar  galore. 

Take  me  over  the  sea,  where  the  Allemand  can't  get  at  me. 

Oh  my,  I  don't  want  to  die!    I  want  to  go  home." 

Lloyd  listened  to  the  words  with  a  strange  interest, 
and  wondered  what  kind  of  a  home  he  would  go  to 
across  the  Great  Divide.  It  would  be  the  only  home 
he  had  ever  known. 

Suddenly  there  came  a  great  rushing  through  the 
air,  a  blinding  flash,  a  deafening  report,  and  the  sand- 
bag walls  of  the  guardroom  toppled  over,  and  then — 
blackness. 

When  Lloyd  recovered  consciousness,  he  was  lying 
on  his  right  side,  facing  what  used  to  be  the  entrance 


i92  THE  COWARD 

of  the  guardroom.  Now,  it  was  only  a  jumble  of  rent 
and  torn  sandbags.  His  head  seemed  bursting.  He 
slowly  rose  on  his  elbow,  and  there  in  the  east  the 
dawn  was  breaking.  But  what  was  that  mangled 
shape  lying  over  there  among  the  sandbags?  Slowly 
dragging  himself  to  it,  he  saw  the  body  of  the  sentry. 
One  look  was  enough  to  know  that  he  was  dead.  The 
sentry  had  had  his  wish  gratified.  He  had  "gone 
home."  He  was  safe  at  last  from  the  "whizzbangs" 
and  the  Allemand. 

Like  a  flash  it  came  to  Lloyd  that  he  was  free.  Free 
to  go  "over  the  top"  with  his  Company.  Free  to  die 
like  a  true  Briton  fighting  for  his  King  and  Country. 
A  great  gladness  and  warmth  came  over  him.  Care- 
fully stepping  over  the  body  of  the  sentry,  he  started 
on  a  mad  race  down  the  ruined  street  of  the  village, 
amid  the  bursting  shells,  minding  them  not,  dodging 
through  or  around  hurrying  platoons  on  their  way  to 
also  go  "over  the  top."  Coming  to  a  communication 
trench  he  could  not  get  through.  It  was  blocked  with 
laughing,  cheering,  and  cursing  soldiers.  Climbing 
out  of  the  trench,  he  ran  wildly  along  the  top,  never 
heeding  the  rain  of  machine-gun  bullets  and  shells,  not 
even  hearing  the  shouts  of  the  officers,  telling  him  to 
get  back  into  the  trench.  He  was  going  to  join  his 
Company  who  were  in  the  front  line.  He  was  going 
to  fight  with  them.  He,  the  despised  coward,  had 
come  into  his  own. 

While  he  was  racing  along,  jumping  over  trenches 
crowded  with  soldiers,  a  ringing  cheer  broke  out  all 
along  the  front  line,  and  his  heart  sank.  He  knew  he 


THE  COWARD  193 

was  too  late.  His  Company  had  gone  over.  But  still 
he  ran  madly.  He  would  catch  them.  He  would  die 
with  them. 

Meanwhile  his  Company  had  gone  "over."  They, 
with  the  other  companies  had  taken  the  first  and 
second  German  trenches,  and  had  pushed  steadily  on 
to  the  third  line.  "D"  Company,  led  by  their  Cap- 
tain, the  one  who  had  sent  Lloyd  to  Division  Head- 
quarters for  trial,  charged  with  desertion,  had  pushed 
steadily  forward  until  they  found  themselves  far  in 
advance  of  the  rest  of  the  attacking  force.  "Bombing 
out"  trench  after  trench,  and  using  their  bayonets, 
they  came  to  a  German  communication  trench,  which 
ended  in  a  blindsap,  and  then  the  Captain,  and  what 
was  left  of  his  men,  knew  they  were  in  a  trap.  They 
would  not  retire.  "D"  Company  never  retired,  and 
they  were  "D"  Company.  Right  in  front  of  them 
they  could  see  hundreds  of  Germans  preparing  to  rush 
them  with  bomb  and  bayonet.  They  would  have 
some  chance  if  ammunition  and  bombs  could  reach 
them  from  the  rear.  Their  supply  was  exhausted,  and 
the  men  realized  it  would  be  a  case  of  dying  as  bravely 
as  possible,  or  making  a  run  for  it.  But  "D"  Company 
would  not  run.  It  was  against  their  traditions  and 
principles. 

The  Germans  would  have  to  advance  across  an  open 
space  of  three  to  four  hundred  yards  before  they  could 
get  within  bombing  distance  of  the  trench,  and  then 
it  would  be  all  their  own  way. 

Turning  to  his  Company,  the  Captain  said: 

"Men,  it's  a  case  of  going  West  for  us.    We  are  out 


i94  THE  COWARD 

of  ammunition  and  bombs,  and  the  'Bodies'  have  us 
in  a  trap.  They  will  bomb  us  out.  Our  bayonets  are 
useless  here.  We  will  have  to  go  over  and  meet  them, 
and  it's  a  case  of  thirty  to  one,  so  send  every  thrust 
home,  and  die  like  the  men  of  'D'  Company  should. 
When  I  give  the  word,  follow  me,  and  up  and  at  them. 
If  we  only  had  a  machine  gun,  we  could  wipe  them 
out!  Here  they  come,  get  ready,  men." 

Just  as  he  finished  speaking,  the  welcome  "pup- 
pup"  of  a  machine  gun  in  their  rear  rang  out,  and  the 
front  line  of  the  onrushing  Germans  seemed  to  melt 
away.  They  wavered,  but  once  again  came  rushing 
onward.  Down  went  their  second  line.  The  machine 
gun  was  taking  an  awful  toll  of  lives.  Then  again 
they  tried  to  advance,  but  the  machine  gun  mowed 
them  down.  Dropping  their  rifles  and  bombs,  they 
broke  and  fled  in  a  wild  rush  back  to  their  trench, 
amid  the  cheers  of  "D"  Company.  They  were  form- 
ing again  for  another  attempt,  when  in  the  rear  of 
"D"  Company  came  a  mighty  cheer.  The  ammu- 
nition had  arrived  and  with  it  a  battalion  of  Scotch  to 
reinforce  them.  They  were  saved.  The  unknown 
machine  gunner  had  come  to  the  rescue  in  the  nick 
of  time. 

With  the  reinforcements,  it  was  an  easy  task  to  take 
the  third  German  line. 

After  the  attack  was  over,  the  Captain  and  three  of 
his  non-commissioned  officers,  wended  their  way  back 
to  the  position  where  the  machine  gun  had  done  its 
deadly  work.  He  wanted  to  thank  the  gunner  in  the 
name  of  "D"  Company  for  his  magnificent  deed. 


THE  COWARD  i9S 

They  arrived  at  the  gun,  and  an  awful  sight  met  their 
eyes. 

Lloyd  had  reached  the  front  line  trench,  after  his 
Company  had  left  it.  A  strange  company  was  nimbly 
crawling  up  the  trench  ladders.  They  were  reinforce 
ments  going  over.  They  were  Scotties,  and  they  made 
a  magnificent  sight  in  their  brightly  colored  kilts  and 
bare  knees. 

Jumping  over  the  trench,  Lloyd  raced  across  "No 
Man's  Land,"  unheeding  the  rain  of  bullets,  leaping 
over  dark  forms  on  the  ground,  some  of  which  lay  still, 
while  others  called  out  to  him  as  he  speeded  past. 

He  came  to  the  German  front  line,  but  it  was  de- 
serted, except  for  heaps  of  dead  and  wounded — a  grim 
tribute  to  the  work  of  his  Company,  good  old  "D" 
Company.  Leaping  trenches,  and  gasping  for  breath, 
Lloyd  could  see  right  ahead  of  him  his  Company  in  a 
dead-ended  sap  of  a  communication  trench,  and  across 
the  open,  away  in  front  of  them,  a  mass  of  Germans 
preparing  for  a  charge.  Why  didn't  "D"  Company 
fire  on  them?  Why  were  they  so  strangely  silent? 
What  were  they  waiting  for?  Then  he  knew — their 
ammunition  was  exhausted. 

But  what  was  that  on  his  right?  A  machine  gun. 
Why  didn't  it  open  fire  and  save  them  ?  He  would  make 
that  gun's  crew  do  their  duty.  Rushing  over  to  the  gun, 
he  saw  why  it  had  not  opened  fire.  Scattered  around 
its  base  lay  six  still  forms.  They  had  brought  their 
gun  to  consolidate  the  captured  position,  but  a  German 
machine  gun  had  decreed  they  would  never  fire  again. 

Lloyd  rushed  to  the  gun,  and  grasping  the  travers- 


196  THE  COWARD 

ing  handles,  trained  it  on  the  Germans.  He  pressed 
the  thumb  piece,  but  only  a  sharp  click  was  the  result. 
The  gun  was  unloaded.  Then  he  realized  his  helpless- 
ness. He  did  not  know  how  to  load  the  gun.  Oh,  why 
hadn't  he  attended  the  machine-gun  course  in  England  ? 
He'd  been  offered  the  chance,  but  with  a  blush  of 
shame  he  remembered  that  he  had  been  afraid.  The 
nickname  of  the  machine  gunners  had  frightened  him. 
They  were  called  the  "Suicide  Club."  Now,,  because 
of  this  fear,  his  Company  would  be  destroyed,  the  men 
of  "D"  Company  would  have  to  die,  because  he, 
Albert  Lloyd,  had  been  afraid  of  a  name.  In  his  shame 
he  cried  like  a  baby.  Anyway  he  could  die  with  them, 
and,  rising  to  his  feet,  he  stumbled  over  the  body  of 
one  of  the  gunners,  who  emitted  a  faint  moan.  A 
gleam  of  hope  flashed  through  him.  Perhaps  this  man 
could  tell  him  how  to  load  the  gun.  Stooping  over  the 
body,  he  gently  shook  it,  and  the  soldier  opened  his 
eyes.  Seeing  Lloyd,  he  closed  them  again,  and  in  a 
faint  voice  said: 

"Get  away,  you  blighter,  leave  me  alone.  I  don't 
want  any  coward  around  me." 

The  words  cut  Lloyd  like  a  knife,  but  he  was  desper- 
ate. Taking  the  revolver  out  of  the  holster  of  the 
dying  man,  he  pressed  the  cold  muzzle  to  the  soldier's 
head,  and  replied: 

"Yes,  it  is  Lloyd,  the  coward  of  Company  'D,'  but 
if  you  don't  tell  me  how  to  load  that  gun,  I'll  put  a 
bullet  through  your  brain!" 

A  sunny  smile  came  over  the  countenance  of  the 
dying  man,  and  he  said  in  a  faint  whisper: 


THE  COWARD  197 

"Good  old  boy!  I  knew  you  wouldn't  disgrace  our 
Company " 

Lloyd  interposed,  "For  God's  sake,  if  you  want  to 
save  that  Company  you  are  so  proud  of,  tell  me  how 
to  load  that  gun!" 

As  if  reciting  a  lesson  in  school,  the  soldier  replied 
in  a  weak,  singsong  voice:  "Insert  tag  end  of  belt  in 
feed  block,  with  left  hand  pull  belt  left  front.  Pull 
crank  handle  back  on  roller,  let  go,  and  repeat 
motion.  Gun  is  now  loaded.  To  fire,  raise  auto- 
matic safety  latch,  and  press  thumb  piece.  Gun  is 
now  firing.  If  gun  stops,  ascertain  position  of  crank 
handle " 

But  Lloyd  waited  for  no  more.  With  wild  joy  at 
his  heart,  he  took  a  belt  from  one  of  the  ammunition 
boxes  lying  beside  the  gun,  and  followed  the  dying 
man's  instructions.  Then  he  pressed  the  thumb 
piece,  and  a  burst  of  fire  rewarded  his  efforts.  The 
gun  was  working. 

Training  it  on  the  Germans,  he  shouted  for  joy  as 
their  front  rank  went  down. 

Traversing  the  gun  back  and  forth  along  the  mass 
of  Germans,  he  saw  them  break  and  run  back  to  the 
cover  of  their  trench,  leaving  their  dead  and  wounded 
behind.  He  had  saved  his  Company,  he,  Lloyd,  the 
coward,  had  "done  his  bit."  Releasing  the  thumb 
piece,  he  looked  at  the  watch  on  his  wrist.  He  was 
still  alive,  and  the  hands  pointed  to  "3:38,"  the  time 
set  for  his  death  by  the  court. 

"Ping!" — a  bullet  sang  through  the  air,  and  Lloyd 
fell  forward  across  the  gun. 


198  THE  COWARD 

The  sentence  of  the  court  had  been  "duly  carried 
out." 

The  Captain  slowly  raised  the  limp  form  drooping 
over  the  gun,  and,  wiping  the  blood  from  the  white 
face,  recognized  it  as  Lloyd,  the  coward  of  "D"  Com- 
pany. Reverently  covering  the  face  with  his  hand- 
kerchief, he  turned  to  his  "non-coms,"  and  in  a  voice 
husky  with  emotion,  addressed  them: 

"Boys,  it's  Lloyd  the  deserter.  He  has  redeemed 
himself,  died  the  death  of  a  hero.  Died  that  his  mates 
might  live." 

— ARTHUR  Guv  EMPEY. 


X 

CHATEAU-THIERRY 

WHEN  the  United  States  of  America  finally  declared 
war  against  His  Satanic  Majesty,  Wilhelm  of  Prussia, 
Carter  nodded  his  approval.  The  nation's  decision 
was  reached  at  a  time  when  he  was  in  a  particularly 
generous  mood,  for  things  had  been  coming  his  way  for 
some  time  and  he  had  finally  settled  down  comfortably 
to  enjoy  them.  In  the  preceding  fall  he  had  reached 
the  goal  of  his  ambition,  the  managership  of  the  New 
York  office  of  the  Atlas  Company,  where  he  had  been 
employed  for  twenty-five  years.  This  carried  a  salary 
of  seventy-five  hundred — some  jump  from  the  petty 
twelve  hundred  on  which  he  had  started;  even  some 
jump  from  the  forty-five  hundred  he  had  been  drawing 
for  the  past  year. 

The  increase  allowed  Carter  to  make  several  very 
satisfactory  changes:  first,  to  move  from  the  rented 
house  in  Edgemere,  where  he  had  lived  for  five  years, 
to  a  house  of  his  own  in  the  same  town,  for  which  he 
gave  a  warranty  deed  to  his  wife;  to  take  his  son  Ben 
out  of  a  commercial  school  and  send  him  to  Harvard 
for  a  liberal  education;  and  to  purchase  a  classy  little 
runabout.  There  were  qe&ain  other  perquisites,  too, 
which  made  the  world  a  better  place  to  live  in,  such 
as  an  added  servant,  a  £ner  table,  and,  finally,  the 

J99 


200  CHATEAU-THIERRY 

privilege  of  taking  the  eight-ten  to  town  instead  of 
the  seven-fifteen. 

Carter  enjoyed  all  these  luxuries  as  only  a  man  can 
who  has  worked  hard  for  them  and  waited  long.  He 
had  promised  them  to  his  pretty  wife  the  day  he  mar- 
ried her,  and  now,  after  twenty  years,  he  had  made  good. 
It  was  worth  something  to  see  him,  after  a  substantial 
breakfast,  kiss  Kitty  good-by  on  the  front  porch,  give 
a  proprietary  look  at  the  neat  shingled  house,  and 
stroll  down  the  gravelly  path  at  a  leisurely  pace,  stop- 
ping at  the  gate  to  light  a  fat  cigar  and  wave  a  second 
adieu  to  the  little  woman,  who  was  still  pretty  and 
who  he  knew  admired  him  from  the  crown  of  his  head 
to  the  tips  of  his  shoes.  She  was  that  kind. 

On  the  eight-ten  he  was  meeting  a  new  class  of 
neighbors — all  eight  to  ten  thousand  dollar  men,  with 
a  few  above  that  figure,  though  the  latter  generally 
moved  to  the  Heights  at  round  twelve  thousand. 
They  were  men  whose  lives  were  now  polished  and 
round  like  stones  on  the  seashore  within  reach  of  the 
waves.  They  varied,  mostly,  in  their  dimensions, 
with  of  course  some  differences  of  political  coloring. 
But  they  were  fast  becoming  neutral  even  in  politics. 
With  America  at  war  the  old  issues  were  disappearing. 

Most  of  the  men  had  long  since  become  used  to  each 
other,  but  Carter,  sitting  in  the  smoker — it  was  almost 
like  a  private  car  reserved  for  those  not  due  at  their 
offices  until  nine — was  actually  thrilled  by  his  asso- 
ciates. And  if  ever  he  found  an  opportunity  to  refer 
among  them  to  "my  son  at  Harvard"  he  was  puffed 
up  all  the  rest  of  the  day.  The  only  thing  he  regretted 


CHATEAU-THIERRY  201 

was  that  the  war  had  done  away  with  football,  because 
in  high  school  the  lad  had  promised  to  make  a  name  for 
himself  in  the  game.  Still,  even  that  had  its  redeem- 
ing features:  his  neck  was  safe.  Though  the  boy  was 
climbing  toward  six  feet  and  weighed,  at  eighteen, 
round  one  hundred  and  seventy,  he  threw  himself  into 
the  line  in  those  final  school  games  with  a  recklessness 
that  made  Carter,  looking  on,  catch  his  breath. 

Carter  had  not  been  able  to  keep  pace  with  the  boy's 
physical  growth.  It  still  seemed  to  him  but  a  brief 
time  ago  that  he  had  been  carrying  him  round  in  his 
arms  as  a  baby.  And  he  had  carried  him  for  miles. 
He  had  not  been  able  to  keep  his  hands  off  him.  He 
had  loved  to  feel  the  downy  head  against  his  cheek 
and  the  frightened  little  heart  pounding  against  his 
own.  Night  after  night  he  had  walked  the  floor  with 
him  with  a  sense  of  creation  akin  to  God's.  And  when 
anything  was  really  the  matter  with  the  child  Carter 
became  a  trembling  wreck. 

Well,  those  days  were  something  to  look  back  upon 
now  with  a  smile.  They  even  played  their  part  in  the 
present.  They  afforded  the  contrast  necessary  to  allow 
him  to  extract  to  the  last  drop  his  final  triumphant 
success.  Some  of  those  who  had  never  taken  the  seven- 
fifteen  did  not  know  what  it  meant  to  take  the  eight-ten. 

Carter,  who  had  previously  been  content  with  one 
paper,  now  bought  the  Times  and  the  Sun  at  the  station 
and  glanced  through  the  headlines.  He  had  read  with  a 
thrill  of  pride,  as  did  everyone  in  the  whole  car  on  that 
early  spring  morning,  the  President's  declaration  of  war. 

He  was  sitting  beside  Culver,  of  the  Second  National 


202  CHATEAU-THIERRY 

Bank,  and  exclaimed:  "Guess  that'll  make  Wilhelm 
sit  up  and  take  notice,  eh?" 

Culver  was  an  older  man.  Carter  could  have  punched 
him  for  his  response  in  a  level  voice:  "Yes.  But  'tis 
going  to  make  us  sit  up  and  take  notice,  too." 

"What  do  you  mean?"  demanded  Carter  with  a 
trace  of  aggressiveness. 

"I  mean  that  our  resources  are  going  to  be  tested 
to  the  limit  before  we're  through  with  this." 

"You  wait  until  the  Huns  see  Uncle  Sam  with  his 
sleeves  rolled  up.  Wouldn't  surprise  me  any  if  they 
quit." 

Carter  shifted  his  seat  to  a  place  near  Barclay  and 
Newell,  who  were  leading  a  group  in  three  cheers  for 
the  President.  And  on  his  way  downtown  that  day 
he  stopped  to  buy  a  flag  and  pole  to  be  sent  to  the 
house.  Before  he  reached  his  office  these  flags  of  red 
and  white  and  blue  had  begun  to  appear  in  numbers 
on  the  tops  of  buildings  and  from  windows,  brightening 
the  dull  gray  backgrounds  as  with  flowers.  It  made 
him  want  to  cheer.  It  made  him  walk  more  erect. 
The  whole  downtown  atmosphere  became  vibrant. 
The  declaration  of  war  was  the  sole  topic  of  conversa- 
tion in  the  office,  and  one  of  the  first  things  he  did  was 
to  ring  up  Kitty  and  tell  her  about  it. 

"Well,  old  girl,  we've  done  it!"  he  exclaimed. 

"Done  what?"  she  asked  anxiously. 

"Declared  war,"  he  announced,  as  though  in  some 
way  he  had  been  personally  concerned  in  the  act. 
"Guess  that  will  make  the  Huns  rub  their  eyes." 

"War?"  trembled  Kitty. 


CHATEAU-THIERRY  203 

"You  bet!  Fritzie  waited  a  little  too  long  with  his 
apologies  that  last  time." 

In  the  succeeding  days  Carter  followed  the  nation's 
preparations  for  the  task  ahead  with  a  feeling  of  re- 
flected glory.  His  favorite  phrase  was:  "We're  going 
at  it  man-fashion." 

He  was  keen  for  conscription  and  liked  to  speak  of  a 
possible  army  of  two  million.  When  the  First  Liberty 
Loan  came  along  he  subscribed  for  a  thousand  dollars. 
He  would  have  taken  more,  but  he  found  that  his 
personal  expenses  had  taken  in  the  last  few  months  a 
decided  jump.  It  was  costing  him  more  than  twice 
as  much  to  maintain  his  new  house  as  it  had  his  old. 
Besides  that,  Ben's  expenses  at  college  were  a  con- 
siderable item.  His  car,  too,  was  costing  more  than 
he  had  anticipated,  and  he  had  added  unconsciously 
a  lot  to  his  everyday  expenditures.  He  was  smoking 
better  cigars,  eating  better  lunches  and  wearing  better 
clothes.  At  the  same  time  each  one  of  these  items  was 
costing  more.  However,  his  new  position  in  a  way 
called  for  these  things,  and,  besides,  he  was  entitled 
to  them.  He  had  worked  hard  for  them  and  they  were 
the  fair  reward  of  attainment. 

Carter  had  hoped  to  do  better  on  the  Second  Liberty 
Loan,  but  when  the  time  came  he  found  it  difficult 
to  take  out  even  another  thousand.  He  rather  re- 
sented the  way  Newell,  the  overzealous  member  of  the 
local  committee,  harried  him  about  it.  When  Newell 
suggested  that  he  double  the  amount  the  man  was 
presuming  to  know  Carter's  circumstances  better  than 
he  himself  knew  them. 


204  CHATEAU-THIERRY 

He  had  answered  rather  tartly: 

"I'm  capable  of  deciding  my  investments  for 
myself." 

In  the  interval  between  the  two  loans  both  the  serv- 
ants had  asked  for  an  increase  in  wages,  and  Carter 
had  been  forced  to  pay  it  or  see  them  go.  Kitty  had 
suggested  that  she  be  allowed  to  get  along  with  one 
and  undertake  some  of  the  housework  herself,  but 
he  had  set  his  foot  down  on  that. 

"You've  had  your  share  of  housework,  little  woman," 
he  said.  "It's  time  you  took  a  rest  and  enjoyed  your- 
self." 

But  the  servants  were  not  the  only  ones  who  held 
Carter  up.  The  grocer,  the  butcher  and  the  iceman 
all  conspired  against  him.  When  the  Government 
began  to  take  control  under  Hoover  and  fix  prices  for 
some  of  the  essentials  Carter  was  outspoken  in  his 
approval. 

"It's  time  something  of  the  sort  was  done  to  check 
the  food  pirates,"  he  declared  to  Culver. 

"Where's  this  government  control  going  to  stop?" 
questioned  the  latter. 

"I  don't  know  and  I  don't  care,"  replied  Carter 
aggressively. 

"It's  a  type  of  paternalism,  and  that's  dangerous," 
suggested  Culver. 

Carter  replied  with  a  glittering  generality:  "Your 
Uncle  Sam  has  rolled  up  his  shirt  sleeves  and  means 
business." 

Carter  always  chuckled  contentedly  over  the  car- 
toons of  the  tall,  lank  figure  with  the  lean  face,  grimly 


CHATEAU-THIERRY  205 

set  jaws  and  starred  top  hat.  It  expressed  for  him 
in  a  human  way  his  own  patriotism.  It  filled  him  with 
pride  and  gave  him  confidence.  It  satisfied  his  tra- 
ditional conception  of  Americanism.  He  even  saw 
in  the  face  a  reflection  of  his  own  ancestors  who  had 
fought  at  Bunker  Hill  and  through  the  Civil  War. 
It  was  distinctly  New  England,  but  New  England 
was  still  in  his  mind  distinctly  America. 

And  yet  Carter  was  puzzled  at  first  when  he  read  the 
names  appearing  in  the  final  draft  lists — puzzled  and  a 
bit  worried.  These  names  were  not  like  those  that 
were  signed  to  the  Declaration  of  Independence  or 
those  who  fell  at  Bunker  Hill.  Decidedly  they  were 
more  like  those  found  in  to-day's  New  York  directory. 
This  might  have  been  expected,  and  yet  it  gave  Carter 
something  of  a  shock  until  one  afternoon  he  saw  a 
regiment  of  khaki-clad  men  rrrarching  down  Fifth 
Avenue.  Then  he  felt  a  lump  in  his  throat  that  pre- 
vented him  from  cheering  as  loud  as  he  wished.  In 
uniform  and  marching  to  the  stirring  music  of  a  mili- 
tary band  these  men  were,  every  mother's  son  of  them, 
Americans.  He  saw  the  same  lean  faces,  the  same 
lank,  sinewy  bodies,  the  same  clear  eyes  and  set  jaws. 
Their  Hps  were  sealed,  so  that  it  did  not  matter  what 
language  they  spoke.  In  khaki  they  were  all  Ameri- 
cans— the  same  who  fought  at  Bunker  Hill. 

The  sight  sent  Carter  home  with  a  renewed  en- 
thusiasm, which  helped  him  survive  the  shock  of  the 
news  that  the  cook  had,  without  notice,  packed  up 
her  trunk  and  left  to  take  some  sort  of  job  in  a  factory. 
But  fortunately  he  had  brought  along  with  him  a 


206  CHATEAU-THIERRY 

sirloin  steak,  which,  broiled,  made  a  very  satisfactory 
dinner.  A  week  later  the  second  girl  left. 

Mrs.  Carter  took  it  good-humoredly,  even  with  a 
certain  amount  of  relief.  She  had  turned  to  Red 
Cross  work  and  one  thing  or  another,  but  still  she 
missed  the  care  of  her  own  home.  Furthermore,  she 
had  been  genuinely  disturbed  by  the  way  the  expenses 
had  been  creeping  up.  But  Carter  stormed  round 
and  spent  half  the  next  day  trying  to  find  some  new 
girls.  The  agencies  showed  him  a  few  old  women  and 
shook  their  heads. 

"We  can't  compete  with  the  factories,"  they  said 
sadly. 

"But,  hang  it  all,  what's  a  man  going  to  do?"  he 
inquired  petulantly. 

The  agencies,  perforce,  left  him  to  answer  that  for 
himself. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  Carter  was  not  wholly  unselfish 
in  his  desire  to  relieve  his  wife  of  the  housework — 
particularly  the  culinary  part  of  it.  She  did  her  con- 
scientious best,  but  she  had  never  been  able  satisfac- 
torily to  master  the  fine  art  of  cooking.  Possibly  it 
was  because  she  herself  was  more  or  less  indifferent  to 
what  she  ate.  A  slice  of  bread  and  a  cup  of  tea  were 
enough  at  any  time  to  satisfy  her,  so  that  when  she 
did  cook  it  was  always  for  him  and  without  any  other 
personal  interest  in  the  result.  Sometimes  she  forgot; 
in  fact,  more  often  than  not  she  forgot.  Perhaps  it 
was  only  some  one  little  thing,  like  leaving  the  baking 
powder  out  of  the  biscuits  or  the  sugar  out  of  the  pies. 
Oi  if  she  did  get  everything  in,  perhaps  she  failed  to 


CHATEAU-THIERRY  207 

remember  in  time  that  the  mixture  was  in  the  oven. 
When  she  began  fooling  round  with  war  recipes  she 
found  herself  even  more  bewildered.  Lord  knows,  it 
calls  for  deft  fingers  and  inborn  skill  to  make  a  good 
pie  crust  out  of  honest  wheat  flour,  with  all  thought  of 
economy  thrown  to  the  winds.  It  requires  nothing 
short  of  genius  to  produce  the  same  results  with  sub- 
stitutes for  everything  except  the  apples. 

She  tried  all  one  afternoon  and  created  something 
that  had  a  fairly  good  surface  appearance.  She  waited 
anxiously  until  Carter  tasted  it,  and  then  asked:  "How 
do  you  like  it,  Ben?" 

"You  want  the  truth?"  he  returned. 

"Of  course  there  is  no  white  flour  in  the  crust,  but 
» 

"There  isn't  anything  in  it  that  ought  to  be  in  a 
pie,"  he  declared.  "It  tastes  to  me  as  though  it  were 
made  out  of  sawdust  and  motor  oil." 

He  did  not  eat  it.  It  might  have  been  possible  had 
he  been  starving,  but  he  was  in  no  such  unfortunate 
condition.  A  man  does  not  ask  for  apple  pie  because 
of  its  calory  content,  but  because  he  wants  apple  pie. 
It  is  a  matter  of  taste.  A  primary  essential  is,  then, 
not  that  it  shall  look  like  apple  pie,  but  that  it  shall 
have  the  flavor  of  apple  pie.  He  had  been  fond  of 
apple  pie  all  his  life,  and  it  certainly  seemed  like  an 
innocent  enough  addiction.  That  was  equally  true  of 
doughnuts  and  coffee  for  breakfast.  He  had  enjoyed 
them  all  his  life  until  they  had  become  an  integral 
part  of  the  morning  meal.  As  a  result  of  long  practice 
Mrs.  Carter  had  finally  succeeded  in  perfecting  herself 


208  CHATEAU-THIERRY 

in  the  art  of  doughnut  making.  But  now  instead  of 
frying  them  in  fat,  she  began  to  use  an  excellent  vege- 
table substitute.  Not  only  that,  but  she  followed  this 
by  using  a  sirup  for  the  sugar,  and  using  eighty  per 
cent  barley  flour  and  twenty  of  wheat.  She  had  been 
given  the  recipe  by  the  local  conservation  board  and 
been  assured  that  the  product  was  very  satisfactory. 

From  the  viewpoint  of  the  conservation  board  that 
may  have  been  true,  but  to  Carter  it  was  nothing 
short  of  criminal  to  allow  these  balls  of  fried  barley 
flour  to  masquerade  under  the  same  name. 

"Don't  call  'em  doughnuts,"  he  growled,  "'cause 
they  aren't.  Invent  a  new  name  for  them." 

"War  doughnuts?"  suggested  Mrs.  Carter  anxiously. 

"War  nothing!"  sputtered  Carter.  "They  don't 
even  belong  to  the  same  family." 

Whereupon  he  turned  to  his  coffee,  sweetened  with 
a  new  kind  of  sticky  substance  that  tasted  like  an 
inferior  grade  of  molasses.  There  were  those  who 
maintained  that  it  was  just  as  good  as  sugar  for  sweet- 
ening. They  were  liars — bold-faced  liars  or  they  had 
lost  their  sense  of  taste.  They  belonged  to  the  same 
class  as  people  who  maintained  that  coffee  was  better 
without  sugar — that  so  one  enjoyed  the  taste  of  the 
native  berry.  One  might  just  as  well  argue  that  flap- 
jacks for  the  same  reason  were  best  without  sirup; 
cake  without  frosting;  bread  without  butter. 

Carter  found  his  breakfast  spoiled  for  him  at  pre- 
cisely the  period  in  life  when  he  was  prepared  most 
to  enjoy  his  breakfast.  This  was  extremely  irritating. 
It  sent  him  to  the  office  every  morning  with  a  grouch 


CHATEAU-THIERRY  209 

that  did  not  wear  off  until  toward  noon,  when  it  was 
renewed  by  having  to  pay  twice  what  he  should  for  a 
tasteless  lunch.  His  cigars  were  the  only  thing  that 
held  up  well  in  flavor,  and  he  began  to  smoke  too 
many  of  them. 

Carter  still  followed  each  day's  news  of  the  nation's 
part  in  the  great  war  with  honest  pride.  He  liked 
the  big  way  his  country  was  going  about  its  prepara- 
tions. He  rolled  the  dramatic  figures  over  his  tongue 
and  gloated  over  the  scale  of  the  various  projects. 
Six  hundred  millions  appropriated  for  airplanes! 

"We'll  show  'em,"  he  announced  to  Culver.  We'll 
have  the  air  over  there  black  with  planes!" 

And  that  job  at  Hog  Island!  They  were  planning  to 
build  fifty  ways  there  inside  of  a  year — just  put  them 
down  on  a  marshy  island. 

"Nothing  small  about  your  Uncle  Sam,"  he  chuckled. 

When  the  inevitable  scandals  began  to  be  whispered 
and  congressional  investigations  were  started,  Carter 
frowned. 

"If  these  stories  are  true,"  he  declared,  "the  grafters 
ought  to  be  lynched;  if  they're  not  we  ought  to  lynch 
the  darn-fool  congressmen  who  are  interrupting  the 
game." 

The  investigations  took  place,  changes  were  made, 
and  the  work  went  on,  with  the  investigations  soon 
forgotten.  Nothing  could  check  the  onward  movement. 
Pershing  landed  in  France,  and  soon  was  followed  by 
his  men.  Work  on  the  same  gigantic  scale  was  begun 
on  the  other  side.  Docks  were  built,  railroads  laid 
down  overnight,  warehouses  put  up  almost  between 


210  CHATEAU-THIERRY 

dawn  and  twilight.  This  vanguard  saw  big  and  built 
big,  and  when  the  news  of  its  accomplishment  began 
to  filter  across  to  the  men  at  home  it  made  every  Amer- 
ican feel  bigger. 

At  the  close  of  his  freshman  year  in  June,  Ben  came 
back  home,  and  that  personal  interest  took  the  place 
of  every  other  in  Carter's  mind.  The  boy  was  looking 
fine.  Drill  with  the  Harvard  regiment  had  taken  the 
place  of  athletics  and  had  left  him  as  rugged  and  tanned 
as  a  seasoned  soldier.  Carter  proudly  took  the  boy 
to  town  with  him  on  the  eight-ten  and  introduced 
him  to  the  crowd.  Then  he  introduced  him  to  every- 
one in  the  office,  including  Stetson,  the  second  vice 
president.  There  was  some  design  in  this.  He  was 
preparing  the  way  for  an  opening  here  for  Ben  as  soon 
as  the  lad  was  through  college.  With  the  benefit  of 
the  experience  Carter  could  give  him  the  boy  ought 
to  climb  high  in  the  Atlas. 

Ben  had  acquired  poise  in  this  last  year.  He  met 
these  men  with  an  assurance  and  charm  of  manner 
tempered  with  respectful  deference  that  surprised  his 
father.  It  was  clear  that  the  boy  made  a  very  pleasant 
impression. 

At  lunch  Ben  repeated  to  his  father  some  of  the 
experiences  he  had  heard  from  college  mates  who  had 
gone  over  to  drive  ambulances.  The  boy  was  full  of 
it  and  his  cheeks  grew  flushed  as  he  talked.  Carter 
became  disturbed. 

"That's  all  very  well,"  broke  in  Carter;  "but  those 
fellows  might  have  made  themselves  more  useful  if 
they  had  waited  until  they  were  of  age.  Both  President 


CHATEAU-THIERRY  21 1 

Lowell  and  the  War  Department  are  advising  men  to 
wait  and  finish  their  college  courses,  aren't  they?" 

"Yes,"  admitted  Ben;  "they  advise  that." 

"Well,  it's  sound  advice,"  declared  Carter.  "A  man 
with  a  college  education  and  Plattsburg  on  top  of  that 
is  worth  twenty  ambulance  drivers.  Officers  are  what 
we  need." 

"I  suppose  so,"  agreed  Ben  abstractedly. 

The  reply  left  Carter  more  comfortable.  The  boy 
was  only  just  nineteen,  and  that  gave  him  two  more 
years  before  he  was  twenty-one.  By  that  time  the 
war  would  be  over.  Carter  was  sure  of  it.  The  nation 
by  then  would  be  in  full  stride,  and  when  that  time 
came  that  was  to  be  the  end  Of  course,  if  by  any 
chance  the  war  should  be  prolonged — why,  then  the 
boy  would  have  to  go.  But  that  contingency  was 
two  years  off — two  long  years  off.  In  the  meanwhile 
the  boy  could  feel  that  he  was  getting  his  training.  He 
was  going  to  make  a  better  officer  for  waiting.  He 
would  gain  in  experience  and  judgment — two  most 
necessary  qualifications  for  an  officer.  Carter  pro- 
ceeded to  enlarge  on  that  subject.  But  the  boy  lis- 
tened indifferently.  Carter's  position,  however,  was 
sound,  and  the  more  he  talked  the  more  he  convinced 
himself  of  this,  so  that  he  succeeded  in  putting  himself 
enough  at  ease  to  talk  of  the  war  in  a  general  way. 

"Sort  of  makes  a  man  glad  he's  an  American  to  be 
living  in  these  days,  eh,  Ben?" 

"You  bet!"  nodded  Ben. 

"The  rest  of  the  world  thought  we'd  gone  soft,  but 
your  old  Uncle  Sam  has  shown  that  he  still  has  fighting 


212  CHATEAU-THIERRY 

stuff  in  him.  It  took  us  some  time  to  get  stirred  up, 
but  once  started — woof!" 

"We've  got  a  big  job  on  our  hands,"  said  Ben. 

"The  bigger  the  better,"  declared  Carter.  "It  takes 
a  big  job  to  wake  us  up." 

The  boy  was  surprised  and  encouraged  by  his  father's 
aggressive  attitude,  and  yet  when  he  ventured  to  re- 
introduce  the  subject  of  ambulance  service  he  saw  his 
father  shy  off  again.  He  was  puzzled  by  this  and  went 
away  after  lunch  to  meet  his  chum  Stanley. 

A  week  later,  as  Carter  was  about  to  settle  down  on 
the  front  porch  for  an  after-dinner  smoke,  Ben  came 
along,  took  his  arm  and  led  him  down  the  graveled 
path  toward  the  road — out  of  sight  of  the  house,  where 
Mrs.  Carter  was  washing  the  dishes.  The  boy  kept 
his  father's  arm  in  an  unusually  demonstrative  manner 
until  he  stopped  beneath  an  electric  light. 

Then  he  asked  quite  casually:  "Dad,  got  your 
fountain  pen  with  you?" 

"Eh?" 

The  lad  held  out  a  paper. 

"What  in  thunder  is  this?"  demanded  Carter. 

"My  enlistment  papers,  dad.  I  went  down  to  the 
Marine  Recruiting  Office  the  other  day  and  passed  my 
physical.  Now — they've  left  a  place  along  the  dotted 
line  for  you  to  sign  because  I'm  under  age." 

The  thing  that  astonished  Carter  most  after  the 
initial  shock  was  a  feeling  of  helplessness.  It  was  as 
though  his  relations  with  his  son  had  suddenly  changed 
and  the  son  had  become  the  father.  He  was  a  foot 
shorter  than  the  boy  anyway,  and  now  he  felt  two  feet 


CHATEAU-THIERRY  213 

shorter.  He  saw  a  new  light  in  the  boy's  eyes,  heard  a 
fresh  note  of  dominance.  And  yet  it  was  only  a  brief 
time  ago — a  pitifully  brief  time  ago — that  he  had 
been  holding  this  same  boy  in  his  arms  as  a  baby. 
Now  he  stood  at  the  lad's  mercy,  even  though  he  still 
saw  below  the  stalwart  figure  of  the  boy-man  the 
downy-headed  baby. 

Carter  gulped  back  a  lump  in  his  throat. 

"Good  Lord!"  he  choked.  "I  can't.  I  can't. 
You're  all  I've  got." 

The  young  man  placed  a  steady  hand  upon  his 
father's  shoulder. 

"You  must  take  this  thing  right,  dad,"  he  said 
firmly. 

"In  another  year " 

"I'd  never  forgive  myself  if  I  waited,"  cut  in  Ben. 
"I've  heard  too  much  from  the  fellows  who've  been 
over  there  and  seen.  I  want  you  to  understand  that 
it  isn't  the  adventure  of  the  thing  that  gets  me.  It's 
the  right  of  it.  I'm  strong  enough  for  the  game,  and 
that's  all  that  counts.  Another  year  wouldn't  make 
me  any  more  fit." 

"You'd  be  ready  for  Plattsburg — in  a  couple  of 
years." 

"Maybe,"  Ben  nodded;  "but  somehow — well,  I 
just  hanker  to  use  my  arms  and  legs  rather  than  my 
head.  The  way  I  feel,  nothing  short  of  a  chance  with 
the  bayonet  will  satisfy  me.  That's  why  I  went  in  for 
the  Marines." 

Carter  glanced  up.  He  saw  those  lips,  which  had 
once  been  so  tender  and  soft,  now  sternly  taut. 


2i4  CHATEAU-THIERRY 

"Have  you  told  your  mother?"  asked  Carter. 

"No,  dad.    I  want  it  all  settled  first." 

"I — I  don't  know  what  it  will  do  to  her,"  Carter 
struggled  on  feebly. 

"She'll  take  it  right,"  declared  the  boy  with  con- 
viction. "She'll  take  it  right  because — because  it's 
for  women  like  her  that  we're  going  over  there." 

Carter  did  not  reach  for  the  paper,  even  then.  He 
merely  found  it  in  his  hands.  He  drew  out  his  fountain 
pen  and  the  name  he  scrawled  upon  the  dotted  line 
might  have  been  written  by  a  man  of  eighty. 

"That's  the  good  old  dad,"  Ben  whispered  hoarsely 
as  he  replaced  the  paper  in  his  pocket.  "You're  a 
brick." 

Carter  tried  to  see  it  that  way.  There  were  moments 
even  when  he  thought  he  was  going  to  feel  proud. 
A  day  or  two  later,  when  Newell,  Culver  and  the 
others  on  the  eight-ten  heard  of  it,  they  hurried  up  to 
him  and  shook  his  hand  with  such  phrases  as  "The 
boy  has  the  right  stuff  in  him,  Carter,"  and  "He  makes 
us  glad  we  live  in  Edgemere."  All  Carter  could  do 
was  to  turn  away. 

The  boy's  going  left  a  great  big  hollow  place  in 
Carter — a  hollow  that  only  grew  bigger  when  he  be- 
gan to  receive  the  lad's  enthusiastic  letters  from  the 
training  camp.  He  missed  him  in  a  way  that  disturbed 
every  detail  of  his  daily  life.  When  he  woke  up  in  the 
morning  it  was  with  a  sense  of  some  deep  tragedy 
hanging  over  him — as  though  the  boy  were  dead. 
This  sent  him  downstairs  depressed  and  irascible. 
His  coffee  with  its  abominable  sirup  tasted  more  bitter 


CHATEAU-THIERRY  215 

than  ever.  The  mere  sight  of  the  war  doughnuts 
irritated  him.  It  was  as  though  they  made  mock  of 
him.  Half  the  time  the  omelet  was  burned,  for  Kitty 
was  becoming  more  forgetful  than  ever,  and  more 
often  than  not  did  not  remember  the  omelet  at  all 
until  she  smelled  it  smoking.  She  did  her  best  to  cheer 
Carter  up,  until  she  found  the  wisest  thing  to  do  was 
to  say  nothing.  As  a  matter  of  fact  everything  she 
said  sounded  to  him  as  hypocritical  as  all  the  con- 
founded war  substitutes  with  which  he  found  himself 
more  and  more  hemmed  in.  Newell  particularly  was 
full  of  new  recipes  for  foods  and  drinks  that  he  claimed 
were  as  good  as  the  original  articles,  and  was  forever 
pulling  clippings  from  his  pockets  on  the  morning 
train. 

"You  ought  to  get  your  wife  to  try  this,  Carter," 
he  broke  out  one  day.  "It's  a  new  recipe  for  cake 
without  sugar,  wheat  or  butter.  Ellen  made  some 
last  night  and  you  couldn't  tell  it  from  the  real  stuff." 

"What  do  you  call  the  real  stuff?"  demanded  Carter. 

"Why,  the  cake  we  used  to  get  before  the  war." 

"And  you  mean  to  say  you  can't  tell  the  difference?" 

"Well,  of  course  this  isn't  quite  so  tasty,  but  it's 
a  darned  good  substitute." 

"You're  welcome,"  growled  Carter. 

Newell  appeared  astonished.  Later  he  repeated  the 
conversation  to  Manson,  and  concluded:  "Do  you 
know,  if  the  beggar  didn't  have  a  boy  in  the  Marines 
I'd  say  he  was  pro-German." 

"Nonsense!"  answered  Manson. 

"Well,  he  wasn't  any  too  keen  about  the  Second 


216  CHATEAU-THIERRY 

Liberty  Loan  when  I  saw  him.  He  only  took  a  thou- 
sand." 

"So?    I  thought  he'd  be  good  for  five,  anyway." 

The  Government  was  already  beginning  to  talk 
about  the  Third  Liberty  Loan.  Somewhat  fretfully 
Carter  read  the  preliminary  announcements.  Where 
was  this  thing  going  to  stop,  anyway?  He  was  not 
any  more  than  keeping  even  with  the  game  now.  And 
even  so,  he  was  not  getting  so  much  out  of  life  as  he 
had  been  getting  before. 

On  top  of  that  they  sent  the  boy  across.  After  an 
interval  of  silence  Carter  received  a  cable  one  day 
announcing  his  safe  arrival  at  a  port  in  France.  It 
took  the  starch  all  out  of  him.  It  was  like  one  of  those 
nightmares  he  used  to  suffer  when  he  dreamed  of  the 
boy  in  some  great  danger  and  was  forced  to  stand  by, 
dumb  and  paralyzed,  powerless  to  help.  It  was  like 
that  exactly,  only  this  was  reality.  Day  by  day  and 
mile  by  mile  this  intangible  merciless  power  called 
war  was  dragging  the  boy  nearer  and  nearer  his  de- 
struction. It  was  barbaric.  It  was  wrong.  This  boy 
was  his. 

Now  he  was  at  a  port  in  France.  Until  the  last  few 
years  that  would  not  have  been  anything  to  worry 
about.  He  had  wished  the  boy  to  travel.  France  had 
always  stood  to  Carter  as  a  land  of  sunshine  and  holi- 
days— a  sort  of  pre-honeymoon  land  to  the  more 
fortunate.  To-day  a  port  in  France  seemed  like  a 
port  in  hell. 

On  the  eight-ten  they  kept  asking  about  the  boy, 
and  when  Carter  told  Barclay  that  Ben  was  over 


CHATEAU-THIERRY  217 

there,  Barclay  answered:  "Lucky  dog.  That  ought 
to  make  you  proud." 

Carter  made  no  reply.  That  was  in  March,  just 
before  the  big  Hun  offensive.  When  that  broke  Carter 
did  not  dare  read  the  papers  for  a  while.  Those  were 
bad  days.  America  had  then  been  in  the  war  nearly  a 
year,  and  yet  it  was  possible  for  those  gray  hordes  to 
dash  at  and  into  the  allied  lines.  They  did  it  again 
and  again,  until  the  world  stood  aghast  and  Carter 
himself  stood  aghast.  It  made  no  difference  whether 
he  read  the  papers  or  not,  for  hourly  bulletins  were 
passed  round  the  office  and  scarcely  anything  else  was 
talked  of. 

America  had  been  in  the  war  nearly  a  year.  Uncle 
Sam  had  appropriated  billions  upon  billions  of  dollars; 
had  built  shipyards  the  size  of  which  staggered  belief; 
had  talked  of  destroyers  and  airplanes  in  terms  of  thou- 
sands; had  established  vast  military  camps  and  already 
drafted  millions  of  men;  had  turned  almost  every  in- 
dustry in  the  country  over  to  war  work;  had  taken 
over  the  railroads  and  whatever  else  was  needed. 

Uncle  Sam  had  been  working  with  his  jaws  set  and 
his  sleeves  rolled  up  and  flags  flying  from  almost  every 
housetop  between  the  Atlantic  and  the  Pacific;  with 
men  marching  down  the  streets  and  bands  playing  and 
half  the  politicians  of  the  country  turned  into  Fourth 
of  July  orators. 

Yet  this  thing  was  happening  over  there.  Lines  that 
had  been  thought  impregnable  were  falling  daily.  City 
after  city  was  being  overrun.  If  the  Huns  paused  it 
was  only  for  breath,  and  to  dash  on  once  more.  Nearer 


218  CHATEAU-THIERRY 

and  nearer  they  came  to  Paris,  until  the  city  heard  the 
sound  of  their  guns;  nearer  and  nearer,  until  they  came 
to  Chateau-Thierry. 

Carter  reached  a  point  where  almost  his  faith  in  God 
was  shaken.  He  did  not  know  exactly  just  what  his 
faith  in  God  was,  but  it  stood  for  something  outside 
himself  representative  of  justice — just  as  his  patriotism 
stood  for  something  outside  himself  representative  of 
honor.  Not  to  be  in  the  slightest  sacrilegious,  God 
was  a  figure  crowned  with  thorns  just  as  Uncle  Sam 
was  a  figure  crowned  with  a  starred  top  hat.  Both 
were  invincible.  Yet  both  stood  aside,  helpless,  before 
the  Huns'  advance. 

They  waited  helplessly  until  the  gray  wolves  reached 
Chateau-Thierry.  Then  the  news  was  cabled  across 
that  the  Marines  were  holding  this  line — not  only 
technically  but  actually.  Again  and  again  the  wolves 
came  on  and  staggered  back. 

The  Marines  were  there — the  American  Marines — 
and  they  were  holding. 

The  first  report  brought  the  sweat  to  Carter's  brow. 
Somewhere  in  that  line  without  much  doubt  his  son 
Ben  was  standing.  The  little  boy  he  had  carried  in  his 
arms  was  under  that  merciless  fire  of  shrapnel  and  ex- 
plosive shells  and  gas.  Carter  had  read  a  good  deal 
about  the  gas  shells — the  yellow  and  the  blue  and  the 
green  cross  kind.  It  was  devilish  stuff".  It  burned  into 
the  lungs  and  the  eyes  and  the  skin.  He  remembered 
when  it  had  first  been  used — had  been  sent  sneaking 
across  the  allied  lines  like  some  ancient  superstition 
made  real.  From  that  moment  he  had  been  for  war. 


CHATEAU-THIERRY  219 

He  talked  war  with  everyone  he  met,  usually  ending 
with  the  exclamation:  "Uncle  Sam  won't  stand  for  that 
sort  of  dirty  work!" 

As  a  matter  of  fact  Uncle  Sam  had  stood  for  it  a 
good  many  months  after  that,  and  for  acts  even  more 
barbaric.  But  now  your  Uncle  Sam  was  right  on  the 
spot  and  Ben  was  on  the  spot.  The  two  were  one! 

This  was  what  Carter  got  hold  of,  suddenly,  unex- 
pectedly, unconsciously,  as  a  man  sees  a  vision.  Uncle 
Sam  was  there  not  in  the  form  of  a  middle-aged  farmer 
in  a  starred  top  hat,  but  as  one  of  the  Marines,  a  tough, 
wiry  young  American  fighter.  And  among  these 
Marines  was  Ben,  holding  this  ghastly  line  as  in  his 
play  days  he  had  helped  to  hold  the  football  line.  Uncle 
Sam  was  there  as  Carter's  boy — blood  of  his  blood  and 
flesh  of  his  flesh  and  soul  of  his  soul.  And  so  in  a  sense 
Carter  himself  was  there.  This  was  his  fight  too.  He 
and  Uncle  Sam  were  one!  He  and  the  nation  were  one. 
He  and  the  brilliant  flags  flying  unharmed  here  in  the 
streets  of  New  York  were  one.  As  far  as  Carter  in- 
dividually was  concerned  he  was  essentially  all  there 
was  of  the  nation — just  as,  individually  and  as  far  as 
his  own  soul  was  concerned,  he  was  all  there  was  of  God. 
But  because  of  this,  because  the  thought  made  him  so 
big,  he  took  in  the  others  too — his  boy,  Kitty,  his 
neighbors,  the  state  and  the  United  States,  and  finally 
God  himself.  And  this  God  not  only  stood  for  justice 
and  honor  but  was  justice  and  honor,  and  Carter  was 
He  and  He  was  Carter. 

Now  God  and  Carter  and  the  boy  and  the  Marines 
and  the  nation  were  all  standing  side  by  side  behind  a 


220  CHATEAU-THIERRY 

little  town  that  until  now  had  been  no  more  conscious 
of  itself  than  Carter  had  been.  It  had  been  merely 
Chateau-Thierry — a  tiny  village  where  simple  men  and 
women  had  gone  about  their  humble  business  of  living 
with  little  thought  of  the  world  at  large.  Now  it  was 
finding  itself  a  turning  point  in  the  history  of  the  world, 
with  the  sinewy  young  men  from  a  country  that  had 
not  been  discovered  when  Chateau-Thierry  already  was 
hoary  with  age,  rushing  there  to  help  keep  it  true.  And 
with  Carter  some  four  thousand  miles  away  staring 
from  his  office  window  and,  quite  unconscious  of  the 
business  of  the  Atlas  Company,  praying  not  that  the 
boy  might  be  kept  safe  for  his  own  sake,  but  that  he 
might  be  spared  to  fight  his  best — Carter's  best,  the 
nation's  best,  God's  best. 

The  Marines  held,  and  then  they  did  a  little  better; 
they  began  to  advance.  They  say  that  Foch  himself 
was  none  too  sure  of  what  these  lads  would  find  it  pos- 
sible to  do.  These  men  were  getting  their  baptism  of 
Hun  fire,  which  is  comparable  to  no  fire  this  side  of 
hell  and  which  possibly  may  have  introduced  some  new 
ideas  into  hell  itself.  Certainly  neither  Dante  nor 
Milton  revealed  any  conception  of  mustard  gas. 

Creeping  forward  on  all  fours,  the  Marines  advanced. 
It  was  grim  business  these  boys  were  about,  while  the 
flags  flew  dreamily  in  the  streets  of  New  York  and  a 
thousand  other  cities  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific 
and  from  the  Canadian  border  to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico — 
flew  dreamily  and  prettily  for  safe  men  to  look  up  at 
and  for  safe  women  and  children  to  smile  at  con- 
tentedly. It  was  serious  business  they  were  about  to 


CHATEAU-THIERRY  221 

the  right  and  left  of  that  old  town,  while  the  machines 
sped  up  and  down  Fifth  Avenue  bright  in  the  summer 
sun.  And  yet  when  at  length  the  cables  flashed  across 
the  ocean  the  news  that  the  old  town  had  been  won 
and  all  that  meant,  there  was  little  in  the  message  to 
hint  of  that  grim  business.  And  there  was  no  mention 
at  all  of  individuals — of  the  boy  Ben  who  lay  in  a  bit 
of  woods  like  one  asleep,  his  hair  all  tousled  and  his 
face  dirty  as  he  used  to  come  in  from  play.  But  that 
night  Carter  went  home  with  his  head  held  high  and 
his  eyes  alight. 

When  Carter  opened  the  front  door  he  was  greeted 
with  the  smell  of  smoke  from  the  kitchen.  He  hurried 
out  there  and  found  Mrs.  Carter  standing  almost  in 
tears  before  the  charred  remains  of  what  had  evidently 
been  intended  for  a  pie  of  some  sort.  She  looked  up 
anxiously  as  Carter  entered.  Her  blue  eyes  began  to 
fill  with  tears. 

"Oh,  Ben,"  she  quavered,  "I'm  so  sorry.  I — I've 
been  saving  flour  and  sugar  for  a  week  to  have  enough 
to  make  you  a  real  apple  pie.  And  then — and  then  I 
forgot  it.  And — and " 

She  made  a  despairing  gesture  toward  the  jet-black 
evidence  of  her  unpardonable  thoughtlessness.  And 
then  before  Carter's  accusing  glance  she  shrank  back 
and  hid  her  face  in  the  folds  of  her  blue  gingham 
apron. 

Carter  stared  from  her  to  the  pie  and  then  back  to 
her.  Fresh  from  the  victory  of  Chateau-Thierry,  this 
was  such  a  pitiful  travesty!  She  was  crying— she,  the 
mother  of  his  son  who  had  fought  with  the  Marines 


222  CHATEAU-THIERRY 

this  day,  was  crying  in  fear  of  his  anger  because  she 
had  spoiled  in  the  baking  an  apple  pie. 

Good  Lord,  to  what  depths  had  he  sunk!  To  what 
pitiful  depths  of  banality  had  he  dragged  her! 

He  strode  to  her  side  and  seized  her  in  his  arms 
fiercely  as  a  baffled  lover. 

"Kitty,"  he  cried  hoarsely,  "look  up  at  me!" 

In  amazement  she  obeyed.  The  clutch  of  his  arms 
took  her  back  twenty-five  years.  He  saw  the  spring- 
time blue  of  her  eyes. 

"Kitty,"  he  pleaded,  "can  you  forgive  me?" 

"Forgive — you?"  she  stammered,  not  understanding. 

"For  making  you  think  it  matters  a  picayune  what 
I  have  to  eat.  Little  woman — little  woman,  we  took 
Chateau-Thierry  to-day!" 

She  drew  back  a  little  as  though  expecting  evil  news 
to  follow.  But  the  news  had  not  yet  come. 

"We,"  he  repeated — "you  and  I  and  Ben  and  the 
Marines  and  Uncle  Sam  and  God — all  together.  We 
not  only  held  the  beasts  but  drove  them  back.  It's 
in  the  papers  to-night." 

"And  Ben "  she  faltered. 

"He  must  have  been  there,"  he  answered. 

«  TT    1       JJ 

But  she  did  not  finish  her  timorous  question.  She 
caught  the  contagion  of  the  fire,  in  her  husband's  eyes 
and  sealed  her  lips.  And  he,  stooping,  kissed  those  lips 
as  he  used  to  kiss  them  before  the  boy  came. 

The  next  morning  Carter  drank  his  coffee  black,  and 
when  Kitty  brought  on  the  war  doughnuts  he  shoved 
them  aside. 


CHATEAU-THIERRY 


223 


"Don't  make  any  more,"  he  said.  "Cut  'em  out  al- 
together. That's  the  trick." 

And  when  on  the  eight-ten  Newell  came  round  with 
a  recipe  for  making  frosting  without  sugar,  Carter  re- 
fused to  listen. 

"Look  here,  Newell,"  he  protested,  "those  con- 
founded things  don't  interest  me." 

"They  don't?"  returned  Newell  ominously. 

"Not  a  little  bit,"  Carter  continued  calmly. 

"You  mean  to  tell  me  you  aren't  interested  in  con- 
servation?" 

"Did  I  say  that?" 

"Well,  it  amounts  to  the  same  thing,  doesn't  it?" 

"Not  on  your  tintype!"  replied  Carter.  "Look 
here,  Newell,  you've  been  talking  pretty  plain  to  me 
lately  and  perhaps  I've  deserved  it,  but  it  leaves  me 
free  to  give  you  a  few  ideas  of  my  own.  What  we've 
got  to  do  is  to  face  this  war — not  duck  it.  We  aren't 
going  to  win  with  substitutes  but  with  sacrifices.  The 
trouble  with  you  and  your  crowd — the  trouble  with 
me — is  that  we've  been  trying  to  eat  our  cake  and  save 
it  too.  What's  the  use  of  those  fool  recipes  of  yours? 
The  time  has  come  to  give  up  cake  and  pie  and  dough- 
nuts— then  why  in  thunder  not  give  them  up  and  be 
done  with  it?" 

"But  the  Government  doesn't  ask  that,"  cut  in 
Newell. 

"Who's  the  Government?"  demanded  Carter. 

"Why— why " 

"You  are.  I  am,"  Carter  cut  in,  answering  his  own 
question.  "That's  all  there  is  to  it.  And  if  you  want 


224  CHATEAU-THIERRY 

V*      *      "  •    * 

to  understand  how  important  you  are,  just  multiply 
yourself  by  a  hundred  million.  That's  what  Hoover 
does.  Do  it  for  yourself."  * 

Newell  smiled  a  little  maliciously. 

"Perhaps  you're  rights  old  man.  By  the  way,  I'm 
on  this  Third  Liberty  Loan  committee,  and  if  you'll 
tell  me  how  much  I  can  look  ahead  for  from  you  it  would 
help."  • 

"Ten  thousand  dollars,"  answered  Carter.  "In  the 
meantime,  if  you  hear  of  anyone  who  wants  to  buy  a 
house,  let  me  know."  *, 

"You  aren't  going  to  leave  us?" 

"  Not  if  I  can  hire  a  cheap  place  round  town,"  an- 
swered Carter. 

"Say — but  you  are  plunging,"  exclaimed  Newell  un- 
comfortably. 

"We  can't  let  that  Chateau-Thierry  victory  go  for 
nothing,"  answered  Carter  quietly. 

At  last-rat  last  Carter  himself  had  declared  war. 
That  was  why  when  he  received  a  cable  to  the  effect 
that  Private  Ben  Carter  was  reported  seriously  wounded 
the  man  could  sign  his  name  firmly  to  the  receipt. 

The  time  had  come  for  the  Huns  to  take  seriously 
the  entry  of  the  United  States  into  the  war. 

— FREDERICK  ORIN  BARTLETT. 


A     000  687  572     8 


